At a press conference yesterday at the Guyana International Conference Centre, President Bharrat Jagdeo indicated that as the current Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), he has been advocating for a new development model for small, middle-income countries in several engagements that he has had recently.

            “It is a message that I have consistently taken to many others. I have spoken to (US Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton about this and also to the Secretary General of the United Nations (Ban Ki-moon),” he stated.
            The Head of State was, at the time, discussing his recent trip to Istanbul, Turkey, with particular emphasis on his meeting with the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick.
            “I met with the head of the World Bank and I spoke largely about CARICOM-related issues – a strong advocacy for more immediate financing for those countries that have suffered so much from the financial crisis, the general economic dislocation that they have been experiencing because of the global crisis, and about the need to ensure that these countries had some form of multilateral debt relief,” President Jagdeo told the media.
            He explained that the meeting with Zoellick was a very good engagement with several ideas being floated by both sides on how to deal with the grave economic situation that has developed in some of the Caribbean countries, and exacerbated by the global downturn.
            Further, a follow-up meeting will be held early next year to assess the progress that has been made on this matter, the Head of State noted.
            The Caribbean delegation led by the President in the discussions with the World Bank head also included the Prime Ministers of the Bahamas, Hubert Ingraham, Barbados, David Thompson, and St. Lucia, Stephenson King.