25153: Bruce Wharram - (News) - Haiti to get CDB membership, access to financing (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From Bruce Wharram <bruce.wharram@sev.org>

The Jamaica Observer

Haiti to get CDB membership, access to financing
AFP
Friday, May 20, 2005

BOURNE... Haiti is a shared challenge and shared responsibility

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP) - Haiti is set to become an active member of the
Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), but only after several administrative
arrangements have been finalised, CDB President Compton Bourne said
Wednesday.

Though Haiti has been barred from attending the ministerial and leaders'
councils of the 15-nation Caricom, Bourne said strife-torn nations should
not suffer financial isolation.

"We Caribbean people, whatever the political differences of the moment, must
remain true to our conviction that the development of Haiti is a shared
challenge and a shared responsibility," he told delegates at the opening of
the 35th-annual meeting of the CDB's board of governors in Guyana.

Bourne could not say how soon Haiti could begin borrowing from the CDB,
however, adding that the decision could be reached in a matter of days or
months.

Denzil Douglas, prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis, said a team of
consultants would be dispatched to Haiti to determine whether the country of
more than eight million people could spend loans and grants from the CDB.
"We need to ensure that a consultancy goes in, works with the country and
ensures that the capacity is there in Haiti to be assisted by the bank and
(that) the ability to repay was taken into consideration when membership was
accessed," Douglas told reporters.

Bourne, meanwhile, gave assurances that Haiti's membership would not weaken
the ability of the bank to serve other Caribbean countries, because large
non-borrowing members of the bank outside the region would help to
contribute funds to a "special window" for that impoverished country.