Today, we also got a closer look at the proposed plan of action on de-risking that the finance technicians from the CARICOM member states have drafted for deliberation. As we told you, yesterday's meeting ended with the finance ministers recommending that part of the action plan for this crisis is to engage the UN and make a comprehensive presentation on the effect de-risking is having on the Caribbean as a whole.
Well, one of the Ambassadors, Dr. Patrick Antoine, who is a chief financial advisor to the Government of Grenada, sat down with us this morning. He outlined what he thinks the CARICOM members should consider while collectively engaging the financial regulators in a manner similar to Prime Minister's trip to Washington 2 weeks ago.
First though, the Secretary General briefed us on the recommendations coming out of yesterday's finance Meetings:
Ambassador Irwin LaRocque - Secretary General, CARICOM
"In deed. The meeting will be making some specific recommendations to the heads of government on a course of action and I believe once the heads have considered them, then can determine how we go forward. I am not at liberty to disclose now, because it has to be presented to the heads first. But yes, very concrete plan of action how we go forward."
H.E. Dr. Patrick Antoine, Chief Finance Adv. - Govt. of Grenada
"The de-risking phenomenon is perhaps the greatest danger to our economic prospects at this time. The most severely impacted country most people will now know is Montserrat. Montserrat has two banks. One of them has actually received notification that they are going to be delisted. Which leave only one and that fate of that one is tenuous. What we are looking at is a very real prospect that a country like Montserrat can be delete - totally delete. Will have no relationship in terms of getting financial transactions process going out or coming in. That's a tremendously difficult place for a country to find itself."
Ambassador Irwin LaRocque - Secretary General, CARICOM
"Time and time again that when we speak with one voice, when we speak collectively, the collective voice is much larger than the sound of our voices and obviously have greater effect than going individually one by one."
H.E. Dr. Patrick Antoine, Chief Finance Adv. - Govt. of Grenada
"The approach that Belize took tells us that going it alone is not necessarily the route. But it also tells us something else. What we need to do is to put the question to the Unites States and I think the question in the session we had yesterday that came out. We need to put the onus on the Unites States to tell us what regulations will transgress or what regulation appear that we are going to transgress. And then they have an obligation to tell us how are they purporting that these limitations accrued and I think that is one of the things we need to do. Not just at the federal level, it's also a level at the regulators. But the federal government has a responsibility also to deal with its regulators. So it can't just be us talking at different levels of the US system. We have to be talking at federal level, at the operations level with regulators, with banks and I think we certainly learnt a lot from that. So in going into the next phase which in March in Jamaica, we really need to wrap our heads around a comprehensive strategy that really now calls out the Unites States and calls out the regulators on some of these matters."
We hope to get the full picture on CARICOM's final decision, which the Interim Chair, Prime Minister Dean Barrow, and the Caucus leaders will provide at a late evening press conference tomorrow in Placencia. We'll have that for you in tomorrow's newscast.
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