by CARICOM ahead of yesterday’s (Thursday’s) G-20 summit deliberations: After Belize, the Community had dispatched a document to all the G20 nation leaders outlining both the region’s assessment of the implications of the global economic crisis, as well as sharing its ideas for reforming the international financial architecture to make the primary financial institutions — e.g. World Bank and International Monetary Fund — more relevant to the needs of the poor and developing countries.

Additionally, while there was no official CARICOM presence in London yesterday for even informal encounters on the margins of this one-day summit of the world’s most powerful nations that now include once ignored ‘Third World’ states–like India, China and Brazil–CARICOM resorted to another initiative.

It opted to trigger, as necessary, a “quick-consultation” mechanism it has in place, largely with the United Kingdom government, but now, to a lesser extent also with Canada, both firm and influential Commonwealth allies of CARICOM.

The hope is that the circulated document and the consultation mechanism may prove helpful in some respects for the Caribbean as well as its traditional allies in the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.

The Community’s own “action plan”, in response to the global crisis, will most likely unfold, possibly within three months at the earliest, following submission of the report from a special Task Force, established last January 29 by the Council on Finance and Planning (COFAP), under the chairmanship of Caribbean Development Bank President Compton Bourne.

Apart from the threats to the region’s economic aid and trade, as well as decline in remittances as a vital source of income for thousands in the region, there is also the concern about the declared intention by both U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Brown to push for the termination of so-called “tax havens’. Such a development will further hurt Caribbean economies that operate legitimate off-shore financial services.

On the side of new policy initiatives, there was Prime Minister Brown’s proposal for the G-20 Summit to back a US$100 Billion expansion of trade financing program to reverse a fall in exports, globally.

An encouraging signal also came last month from both Prime Minister Brown and President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva of Brazil for the creation of a new global trade agreement.

President Da Silva had provoked more than raised eyebrows at his recent meeting with Prime Minister Brown in Brazil when he pointedly blamed the “irrational behaviour of the rich world’s white people with blue eyes” for the current global economic crisis”, and argued that the “poor and developing countries should not be made to pay for their mistakes.”