CARICOM Heads of Government have agreed to establish a Committee of Finance Ministers to work with the Caribbean Association of Banks on a plan to deal with the Region being unjustly labelled a high-risk area for financial services.CARICOM Chairman, Prime Minister of The Bahamas, Perry Christie made the announcement during the closing press conference of the 26th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Friday.

“Because in many cases our indigenous banks cannot provide a high level of reward, correspondent banks [in North America and Europe] are closing their relationships with them because of the claim that the Caribbean is a high-risk area for financial services,” Prime Minister Christie said.

“Unless this situation is addressed with urgency, the indigenous banks in each of our countries will be adversely affected in their operations” he added.

Immediate past CARICOM Chairman, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne told the press conference the threat will have an impact on trade and investments.

“The Caribbean Association of Banks have assets in excess of 30 billion U.S. dollars. They are a very important part of the Region’s payment system. So that, if they’re unable to settle their transactions in the United States, Canada and Britain, that clearly has serious implications…”

“It means therefore that we wouldn’t be able to settle our trade transactions expeditiously. It also has implications for investments and we thought that rather than having the banks deal with these issues on their own, that there was need to elevate it to the level of the regional CARICOM governance and to have CARICOM as a whole address the issue with various entities, to include the IMF, the World Bank, OAS, and also to have dialogue with the correspondent banks in the various countries” said the Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister and Minister of Finance who will chair the Committee.
(CARICOM Secretariat)