INSIDE BUSINESS: DAVE TANCOO AT CAF

The Finance Minister is heartened by what he has experienced at a meeting of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean .

Transcript

00:00Minister of Finance Davindranath Tunku attended the meeting of the Board of Directors of the

00:05Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, ahead of the UN's fourth international

00:10conference on financing for development in Civella, Spain. He shared his perspective on

00:16regional cooperation, diversification and evolving development agenda with CAF and described his

00:23recent experience at the high-level gathering as both refreshing and promising.

00:28What I noticed is that there's a substantial level of interest in countries working together

00:34for the national development of their own countries and for international development.

00:40It was a very refreshing experience. I think CAF has a long way to go. Finance for development

00:45as opposed to finance just for projects. Tunku explains that finance for development means

00:52countries being given an opportunity to lift the quality of lives and boost the significance of

00:58environmental development. He believes these are wonderful initiatives and says he likes the fact

01:04that CAF is leading the way in this initiative. On Trinidad and Tobago's Future Beyond Oil and Gas,

01:11Tunku acknowledged the country's history of dependence on the energy sector but said that during a panel

01:17discussion at the meeting, he pointed out that a shift is already underway. He said over the past

01:23decade, the government has laid out the groundwork for economic diversification, focusing on areas like

01:30shipping, tourism, education, sport, health and culture. We are looking to several advantages which

01:37Trinidad already has. We have advantages along the lines of the shipping. We are geopolitically

01:42perfectly located for shipping, for the development of Latin America and the Caribbean, for tourist

01:48potentials, education, sport, health, cultural tourism, etc. And those initiatives are what the new government

01:56is pushing forward in a new mandate from the population of Trinidad and Tobago to develop Trinidad and Tobago's

02:01economy away from total reliance on oil and gas and into a wide variety of other initiatives.

02:08Tunku also praised CAF for broadening the development conversation beyond finances to include people

02:15and the environment. Tunku says this is one of the critical aspects that should be celebrated in terms

02:22of CAF's involvement in TNT and the Caribbean. So CAF has allowed us to view development as a development

02:30objective for the country, for the people, for society generally and for long-term planning. The advent of

02:37some of the initiatives, the depth of nature, the biodiversity credits, those kinds of opportunities

02:43provided to Caribbean countries generally did not exist before. Some of the other multilateral lending

02:48agencies would have focused essentially on the financial criteria. And now we are seeing, courtesy of CAF,

02:54even some of those other institutions now gravitating towards the broader developmental objectives.

02:59Feshana Pagu for Inside Business.