CDB, ACS announce new partnership

A partnership between the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) is a concept whose time has come.

This was the consensus yesterday when the two organisations formally established their alliance during the first official visit of ACS Secretary-General Ambassador Rodolfo Sabonge to CDB’s headquarters in Barbados for bilateral talks and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the institutions.

The blue economy, trade, disaster risk reduction, and climate action are just a few of the shared interests between CDB and ACS, according to Ambassador Sabonge, who also emphasised how closely their goals and strategies matched in many instances.

“We’re looking at an era of partnerships where we can only advance if we do things together. We have found through [our] meetings that our strategies and our goals are very much aligned on the focal areas of the ACS,” he noted.

Dr Gene Leon, president of the CDB, clarified the issue further by pointing out that the ACS’ strategy and work were well aligned with four of the five pillars of the bank’s 2020–2024 Strategic Plan (Updated), namely building social resilience, environmental resilience, production resilience, and institutional resilience in the Caribbean.