Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is promoting a debt repayment system for Caribbean countries similar to what was granted to Britain after World War II that allowed that country to have the fiscal space to return to a path of development, The Jamaica Observer reported Sunday.
She was speaking during a University of the West Indies (UWI) Vice Chancellor’s Forum at the Distinguished Arthur Lewis Event on June 21 at The UWI Cave Hill Campus, which also featured Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
Lamenting the absence of such provisions in the international financial system, Mottley pointed out that middle-income countries have been set back at least a decade because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking on the topic “A Conversation on Sustainable Island Futures,” she pointed out disparities in the global financial system that provided developed countries with significant leeway to access financing at minimal repayment terms compared to that of developing countries and to make financial decisions that have a global impact without any consultation.
“There has to be something fundamentally immoral about a global community that is prepared to use proxies that are convenient to them and economists and bureaucrats but bear no relationship to the quality of life of our citizens which we set out to protect, set out to protect in the charter of the United Nations (UN) being established in 1945, set out to protect when the UN accepted that development is an inalienable right, set out to protect each time we meet and each time we bring these high-sounding declarations,” Mottley said.