Regional Leaders to Meet with High-Level US Delegation in Barbados for Urgent Financial Reform Talks

Several regional leaders are set to meet with a high-level United States delegation in Barbados this weekend.

The disclosure came on Thursday from Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley who said the meeting will be with “some decision-makers, and high-ranking members of the United States government, which is currently in transition”.

‘We have a number of issues on the table, not the least of which is something called the Bridgetown Initiative. We have been fighting with the Bretton Woods institutions to treat us more fairly in these difficult times and also to get terms and conditions…for our countries,” he said at a news conference.

The Bridgetown Initiative calls for urgent and decisive action to reform the international financial architecture that was designed at a time when most of the current member states were not independent and when climate risks or social inequalities, including gender equality, were not considered pre-eminent development challenges.

While Barbados continues to play a leading role, it is not an initiative of Barbados alone, but rather a coalition of partners in a movement for global change.

Rowley told reporters: “I have been involved with it, been to Washington on more than one occasion. The US delegation has been to the Caribbean. We thought we had made some progress but it has been crystalising on something called the Bridgetown Initiative which we need to defend and grow and advance to the US authorities and the international financial bodies.”

“Therefore, we will meet in Barbados from Friday afternoon,” he said. “We cannot but be engaged in these issues. They have far-reaching consequences.”

Rowley did not name the other regional leaders expected at the meeting with the US officials or whether these officials are from the outgoing Biden administration or the incoming team of President-elect Donald Trump.

However, Barbados TODAY understands that top Democratic Party politicians Hakim Jeffries and Barbara Lee will lead a congressional delegation that will also participate in the centennial celebrations of Shirley Chisholm’s birth.

(CMC/BT)