The CARICOM chairman, who was flanked by Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo and the grouping's Secretary General Edwin Carrington at the press conference, referred specifically to challenges faced in the region’s offshore financial sector where countries have been struggling to get off the negative listing posted by the Paris–based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders said Thursday they were looking to the World Bank to “champion” the cause of highly-indebted regional economies, as well as to provide new and immediate relief for earthquake-devastated Haiti.

The disclosure was made by the chairman of the 15-nation grouping, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, as he and his regional colleagues prepared to meet with the Bank’s president Robert Zoellick on the first full working day of the 21st CARICOM Intersessional Summit here in Roseau.

“One of the matters we will be putting forward to the President of the World Bank is to establish a designated development fund for Haiti where all the resources which have been pledged by various countries and institutions could be deposited into a special account to have better and more efficient access to it,” Skerrit said told journalists before heading into the closed-door talks.

“We want to ensure that Haiti continues to be at the centre of our agenda and that the international and regional community do not forget Haiti now that the headlines are no longer on Haiti.

“Haiti requires the absolute support of all of us,” he added.

“We also want to ensure that the Haitian government and its people … are not sidelined. We want to ensure that the errors of the past do not repeat themselves.”

CARICOM’s newly-appointed special representative to Haiti, former Jamaica Prime Minister PJ Patterson, was due to brief the government leaders on the situation in Haiti following the magnitude 7.0 quake that killed an estimated 300, 000 people and caused widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure.

The meeting with Zoellick follows talks with some CARICOM leaders during the annual World Bank meeting in Turkey last October, when he agreed to have deeper engagement with the regional grouping.

“We must say that so far, we have been getting tremendous support and cooperation from the President of the World Bank and we look forward to forging, for the want of a better word, an alliance with the President of the World Bank to seek to advance the issues which confront CARICOM,” Skerrit said.

The CARICOM chairman, who was flanked by Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo and the grouping’s Secretary General Edwin Carrington at the press conference, referred specifically to challenges faced in the region’s offshore financial sector where countries have been struggling to get off the negative listing posted by the Paris–based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Amid the ongoing global economic and financial crisis that has adversely affected the entire 15-nation grouping, officials are also hopeful that the talks with Zoellick will result in the identification of new and viable approaches to the treatment of economic matters, including the crippling debt burden being carried by several member states.

“We are hoping that the President of the World Bank can champion our cause in that regard and of course we are highly indebted countries and we need to be treated in a special and different manner,” the CARICOM chairman said.

In his remarks, Jagdeo warned that unless the debt burden was addressed “there is no viable medium–term growth strategy for the region”.

“What we are trying to do here is to ensure that we carve out in the international financial institution structure a special place given our peculiarities for debt relief to small, vulnerable, middle income countries which don’t have to be extended to the larger middle–income countries,” he said.

He also said the tax haven issue was one of several systemic matters that must be addressed to protect the region’s economic viability.

The Guyanese leader said placing CARICOM countries on watch–lists like the OECD’s so called “grey list” of financial jurisdictions that have not complied with the internationally agreed tax standards was tantamount to “an unfair characterisation of the region where the developed world jurisdictions that support financial services often do less than we do but yet we are lectured.

“We find ourselves on grey lists and we bear the brunt of penalties because people either don’t know what we are doing to clean up and make transparent our financial sector or they don’t want to do it for competition purposes,” he said.

Skerrit and Jagdeo are being joined by most of their colleagues, although there are some notable absences.

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is among those opting to remain at home to deal with domestic issues during an election year, while his Trinidad and Tobago counterpart Patrick Manning is preparing to face a vote of no confidence.

Montserrat’s Chief Minister Reuben Meade, who is due Thursday to make his first budget presentation since taking office in September is also absent, as well as Prime Minister Dean Barrow of Belize and President Ronald Venetiaan of Suriname.

Haiti’s President Rene Preval, who is currently in the United States drumming up support for his earthquake devastated country, is expected to join the remainder of his CARICOM colleagues on Friday before the meeting ends.