Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo told reporters in Montego Bay part of the strategy in that regard was the the presence at the CARICOM summit of the Secretaries General of the United Nations and the Organisation of American States (OAS), and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
He said he was "extremely pleased" that they agreed to attend the summit and noted that it did not happen by chance. He explained that CARICOM had been putting “increasing pressure” on those leaders to visit the Caribbean for talks with regional leaders.
“They came prepared, they came with a brief of the state of the economy of the region and so they were aware of our biggest challenges, they were aware of the challenge to construct a viable development strategy - medium and long term - in light of the situation that we face with the global crisis.
“They were aware of the immediate problems ... of some countries of the region experience,” Jagdeo said.
He added that one of the ways these institutions, particularly the IMF, can help “is to make greater access from some of the facilities they have in place”.
He said what the Caribbean wants is support for "a new model of development appropriate to small developing countries that would be significantly different from the model pursued by the larger developing countries".
Jagdeo said he suggested to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the world body change how it classifies states. The UN has three categories of countries, developed, developing countries and less developed countries.
Jagdeo said “from time to time they enter into discussions with Small Island Developing States (SIDS) but it is not entered into a major way in the development lexicon of the United Nations.
“Unless it is done so, then this group of countries to which we belong to, would not be seen as a special category of countries with real vulnerabilities that are different from others, requiring different sets of development tools to address their concerns," he said.
Jagdeo told reporters the new model for the Caribbean would need political support from several countries, including those in the G8 and the heads of the multi-lateral financial institutions.
He said, “Now we need to do more of the technical work to support our case. Once we have those three together we may be able to succeed in changing the development paradigm for our region and to get a series of things that we are arguing for, special instruments that would allow us to prosper”.
He said the new model which he envisages may influence discussions at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and influence the provision of debt relief for the first time ever for middle income countries.
He spoke about other benefits as well. "If we succeed in getting the model in place. It would allow us to get a significant chunk of the money set aside for climate change ... so the first task has to be model building,” Jagdeo said.
Jagdeo said leaders have shown a great amount of enthusiasm for the new model.
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