June 14, 2024 Story by Kenton X. Chance | CMC
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) finance ministers and central bank governors will meet next week ahead of the annual heads of government meeting in Grenada in July to discuss using Afreximbank’s Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to make trade payments in the region.
CARICOM Chairman and Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali, told the 31st Afreximbank Annual Meeting and the Third AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum (ACTIF2024) that ends here later on Friday that every CARICOM country has complained about the payment settlement system.
“We have an opportunity now that you are vested with a payment settlement system and that is why as Chair of CARICOM, I have asked the Chair of the CSME (CARICOM Single Market and Economy) Prime Minister [Mia] Motley and she has agreed to convene a meeting with ministers of finance and governors next week so that we can take to the next heads of government meeting in CARICOM a proposal where we can use your system to implement a regional system for payment settlement,” Ali said.
“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he said during the opening ceremony of the three-day meetings.
“We need to trust each other. We need to trust our system. We need to trust our brain power. That is what is important,” Ali told the meetings, which were attended by a number of CARICOM leaders, including PM Motley, host prime minister Phillip Davis, St. Lucia’s Phillip J. Pierre and Dickon Mitchell of Grenada.
“We do not trust ourselves and the potential we have in finding the solutions that are required for ourselves. And that is what this forum offers us: the understanding of each other and the building of trust. We are on to a good platform in the building of trust between Africa and the Caribbean. Let us take this forward to greater heights,” he said.
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