St. Kitts and Nevis leads delegation to CDB Board of Governors meeting

St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas (right) and Premier and Minister of Finance in Nevis, Hon. Joseph Parry. Photo by Erasmus Williams

ST. KITTS, MAY 18, 2010 (CUOPM) – St. Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas leads a five-person delegation to the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to be held at the Sheraton Cable Beach Hotel in Nassau, The Bahamas, on May 19 and 20, 2010.

The Board of Governors is the highest decision-making body of the Bank.

Prime Minister Douglas, who is Minister of Finance and Board Governor for St. Kitts and Nevis is accompanied by Premier of Nevis and Minister of Finance in the Nevis Island Administration, Hon. Joseph Parry; Federal Financial Secretary, Mrs. Janet Harris; Financial Secretary, Nevis Island Administration, Mr. Laurie Lawrence and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr. Erasmus Williams.

Representatives of local financial institutions including the Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) are expected to be represented at the meeting.

According to the Barbados-based regional financial institution, CDB is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and is returning to the country where the First Meeting of the Board of Governors took place in 1970.

The Governors’ meeting will be preceded on Monday, May 17, by a meeting of the Board of Directors. On Tuesday, May 18, there will be a meeting of the Procedures Committee of the Board of Governors, followed by the Annual Meeting of Contributors to the Bank’s Special Development Fund and the William G. Demas Memorial Lecture.

Two special panel discussions will be held as part of the Annual Meeting activities. On May 18, the panelists will be Sir William Allen, Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, The Bahamas; Professor Rose-Marie Belle-Antoine, Professor of Labour Law and Offshore Financial Law, University of the West Indies; Mr. Paul Byles, Chairman, Cayman Islands Development Bank; and Dr. Terrence Dwyer, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Economics and Government, Australian National University. They will be discussing The Future of the Offshore Financial Services Industries.

While on May 19, Constraints to Growth and Development Strategies for the Caribbean will be the discussion topic. Dr. Charmaine Gardner, Chairman, Cave Hill School of Business and Past President, Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce; Professor John Agard, Member of the Nobel Prize Winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change; and Dr. Andrew Powell, Regional Economic Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank and Dr. Denny Lewis-Bynoe, Director Economics, CDB, will be the panelists.