And the president of the bank also discussed banking policy in the region. He pointed to what is known as the trade finance guarantee program - where the CDB is using its double A rating to drive down lending rates for MSME's:
Daniel Best, President, CDB
"We talk a lot in the Caribbean about the excess liquidity, right? I think we figure somewhere around seven billion excess liquidity. And governments say, you know, the commercial banks need to do more."
"Entrepreneurs say the thresholds are too high for boring. Commercial banks are saying, or commercial lenders rather, are saying that the projects are coming forward not fully baked. They're too risky."
"And here we are sitting on the sidelines with a AA plus rating. So what have we done? We've brought our AA plus rating to the game, right? And we've said, okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to provide you commercial lenders with a guarantee."
"That reduces your risk of providing financing to them. But also, because your risk is reduced, we expect a lower rate to also get to these entities involved in trade. And so we expect now for there to be more movement inter-regionally and internationally within the trade space by virtue of our guarantee."
Later on, we'll have a little more from the press conference, as we ask the Bank president about the brain drain of highly trained young people.
