Guyana’s President, Bharrat Jagdeo urged the newly appointed Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, to support the fight against climate change by championing a shift away from traditional instruments of overseas development assistance (ODA) among multilateral lending institutions when dealing with funds for tackling climate change.
Meeting on the margins of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Washington DC, Jagdeo urged Lagarde to support a shift to a new mindset in thinking about climate finance, highlighting that this is a new type of finance that is distinctly different from ODA and one that requires new and different instruments.
He noted that developing countries are losing confidence in existing institutions, whose current set of financing instruments are not well suited for addressing the challenges associated with climate change, and that new thinking is needed to rebuild that confidence. Jagdeo further emphasised that it would not be difficult to create the required instruments, and that this could be done without compromising environmental and social safeguards and fiduciary standards.
President Jagdeo also raised the issue of the high levels of public debt in many Caribbean countries, and urged the IMF leader to consider debt relief for middle income countries with very specific sets of circumstances. He noted that many of the small island countries in the Caribbean are dependent on few economic sectors, and are highly vulnerable to shocks such as natural disasters. A high level of debt in these countries is a major burden that limits economic growth and curtails development prospects.
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