BUSINESS REPORTER
The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) plans to invest US$700m in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) once it opens an office as the trade finance bank seeks to boost trade between Africa and the region.
Afreximbank president Benedict Oramah said they will work with governments of the CARICOM to set up a Caribbean export-import bank. The Exim bank will either be a subsidiary or affiliate of the Cairo-headquartered bank, Oramah said on Thursday.
“Afreximbank envisages committing an investment of US$700m in the Caribbean as soon as a regional office is opened, building on the US$250m we have made available to support Africa-Caribbean trade and investment,” Oramah said at the inaugural AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2022).
ACTIF2022 runs from September 1 to 3 in Bridgetown, Barbados, under the theme, “One People, One Destiny: Uniting and Reimagining”.
Oramah said Afreximbank would be “pleased” to advance “our discussions with the Caribbean Development Bank to scale-up trade enabling infrastructure investments in the region as well as investments in the integration of CARICOM countries in the emerging value chains within geographic Africa, being made possible by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement”.
He said the bank looks forward to supporting airlines that can begin regular flights between Africa and the Caribbean.
“And as soon as the Partnership Agreement is signed, we will work to foster Joint Ventures for the establishment of industrial parks in the Caribbean; we will aim to support African investments in the Caribbean tourism sector; help promote local content in Guyana and elsewhere where the oil and gas sectors are emerging; support agro-processing projects; support the project on intra-Caribbean and Africa-Caribbean payment rails; and help with climate change adaptation projects, among others,” Oramah said.
In a keynote address to participants, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Africa and the Caribbean had the collective brainpower, creativity, discipline, resilience and capital to make a defining difference and called for the creation of air bridges between the regions.
Emphasising the importance of collaborating at various levels to facilitate development, she insisted that political cooperation, even though essential, was not sufficient to reverse the underdevelopment of Africa and the Caribbean.
“We, children of independence, have determined that we shall not allow another generation to pass without bringing together that which should have never been torn asunder. We face common battles from the climate crisis to the Covid pandemic, now to the third aspect of it, with respect to inflation and debt that threaten to tear too many of our countries apart and threaten to put back into poverty too many of our people,” Mottley said.
“These travel dependent economies, whether in Africa or in the Caribbean, have literally been thrown on their backs and we seek to fight this battle of bridging and reclaiming our Atlantic destiny on both sides, at the very time when the travel and tourism industry is facing its greatest challenge in decades… We can choose to record that as another major battle, or we can say as my country has done, even in the midst of an IMF programme, that if you do not seize our destiny now, we will never seize it.”
Afreximbank signed partnership agreements with five Caribbean countries to manifest the commitment of Afreximbank and the Caribbean to promote, accelerate and support trade and investment opportunities in several areas of cooperation between the two regions. Afreximbank signed the agreements with Barbados, Suriname, St. Kitts, Dominica and St. Lucia.
CARICOM is a grouping of 20 countries—15 member states and five associate members—and home to about 16m.
Stretching from The Bahamas in the north to Suriname and Guyana in South America, CARICOM comprises states that are considered developing countries, and except for Belize, in Central America and Guyana and Suriname in South America, all members and associate members are island states.
The Government of Barbados and the Afreximbank, in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the AfCFTA Secretariat, the Africa Business Council, the CARICOM Secretariat, and the Caribbean Export Development Agency, are convening ACTIF2022.
