Dominica: Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, told a news conference on Monday, that Dominica hardly has international reserves and ALBA is exercising some level of flexibility that will take this into account.
According to a Dominica NewsOnline report, the PM announced this following media reports that the eight-nation bloc of Latin American and Caribbean ALBA countries agreed on Sunday to deposit one percent of their international reserves into a jointly administered development bank as they seek to deepen economic cooperation and the countries that have agreed to deposit one percent of their international reserves in the ALBA Bank include members Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The DNO reported, “None of us in the OECS, our members of ALBA, have enough space to have reserves within the ALBA arrangement there is always special and differential consideration for the peculiarities of our economies,” PM Skerrit explained. The one percent international reserves contribution will come from ALBA member states “that have the ability and capacity to so do…There is no expectation that countries like ours that have no money to give, so we won’t be expected to make that one percent available because we do not have it anyway,” he said.
The prime minister also explained further that Dominica was not yet a full-fledged member of the ALBA Bank, but that this was under consideration and the island would have to make some kind of contribution if it accepts membership of that financial institution.
“It’s a bank that we support fully, we have not taken loans from the bank yet, this is a bank where you get loans at one and two percent,” Prime Minister Skerrit said, adding that Dominica would soon decide whether or not it becomes an official member of that financial institution. He indicated that such concessionary loans are disbursed speedily and as far as Dominica is concerned it is a “very attractive proposition”.
The DNO report said that membership however will mean Dominica having to make a contribution, based on the bank’s assessment of the island’s economy and its GDP to determine the size of the contribution that must be made.
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