#UNGA – Prime Minister Browne addresses a major concern for CARICOM Member States

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Secretary-General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque congratulates Hon. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda and Chairman of CARICOM following his presentation to the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly, Thursday.

Prime Minister Browne in his statement, addressed a major concern for CARICOM Member States:

…international institutions must be urged to stop penalizing small Caribbean States on the basis of the flawed per capita income criterion. Our countries are denied access to concessional financing because we are classified as middle income countries.

This obdurate attitude from the international financial institutions, in not devising better criteria for assessing the eligibility of small economies for concessionary financing, forces us into the commercial lending market. The consequence of this is that our debt is rising, and many of us are among the most heavily indebted countries in the world on a per capita basis.

But I ask, what is the alternative? Rhetorically I ask again, what is the alternative?