By Government press office | BELIZE
BELMOPAN, Belize – The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) held its virtual annual general meeting from March 19 to 21, 2021.
The Belize delegation was led by John Briceño, prime minister and Belize’s governor of the bank, along with Christopher Coye, minister of state in the ministry of finance, economic development and investment and alternate governor; Narda Garcia, chief executive officer in the office of the prime minister; and Elvira Mendez, Counselor in the office of the executive director of the IDB.
The expected outcome of these meetings is to build a case for an increase in the resources of the Bank to meet increased demand and to adopt a resolution instructing IDB’s management and board to conduct rigorous analysis on the capacity of the Bank to support countries in the medium- and long-term.
The governors for Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua discussed the key issues and agreed on a unified position that the Central American constituency would advance during the formal sessions. These main issues were detailed in the Constituency intervention.
The statement included four requests to the IDB management:
- Implement financial instruments that provide liquidity to restore fiscal space;
- Provide resources for the reconstruction and development of countries affected by natural disasters;
- Study the viability to pay patent and manufacturing of vaccines in Central America;
- To develop an IDB concessional resource strategy for the provision of financial and technical support for the resilient recovery of productive systems in the Central American countries.
The prime minister made his intervention on behalf of Belize during the session of the strategic vision of the IDB Group 2021-2025.
He underscored the imperative for the IDB Group to support our countries to implement a transformative agenda while having full regard to the core principles of access, equality, gender equity, integration, and most importantly, inclusion. In his statement, he also emphasized that the strategic vision 2021-2025 must include a comprehensive strategy on concessional resources to help countries develop a comprehensive climate change and natural disaster reduction strategy to foster resilience.
The prime minister further underscored that the IDB is a strategic principal partner for the region. At the same time, he highlighted the principle of shared but differentiated responsibility between borrowing and non-borrowing countries, a principle that necessitates the pursuit of inclusion and special consideration of the poorest and most vulnerable countries like Belize.
