 Erlbuske, Dr. Hygienus Leon took office on the first Monday of May 2021 as president of the Caribbean Development Bank becoming its sixth chief executive. The seasoned economist has spent his first 100 days leading the regional multilateral institution with a team of more than 200 employees at the CDB's headquarters in Bridgetown, Barbados. He was selected for the top regional post at the region's top bank with 35 years of experience in economics, financial policy development and executive management, as well as modern 20 of which were spent working with the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Leon took his seat at the CDB's headquarters in Barbados, like I said in May, acknowledging that he'd inherited what he said back then was, and I quote, a solid foundation for the evolution of a financially strong bank that responds to the developmental needs and priorities of its boring member countries, which the foundation has been led by his five predecessors. The president succeeded Dr. William Warren Smith in the 21st year of the 21st century and is the fifth to step in the shoes of the founding presidents Arthur Lewis five decades later to guide the region's banking development thrust from its impressive and sprawling Barbados headquarters complex at Willady in a way that the region can really bank on. 100 days on the job Dr. Leon has agreed to converse with us about his mission, the challenges and opportunities, his experiences in the job and of course he is also going to share with us, like I said, how he spent his first quarter at the bank's helm in the middle of a global pandemic and whether the ambitious goals he set at the outset are in fact being met. We're talking here about Caribbean development and of course about not just Dr. Leon having the same alma mater as Arthur Lewis, but also talking about his first deep dive into economic theory at a college named after Arthur. So here is our conversation. Dr. Leon, thanks for agreeing to have this conversation with us. Welcome to UETV Global and thanks for agreeing to converse with us, like I said, on your first 100 days in office as the bank's president. Now you have admitted that you inherited a solid foundation led by your predecessors for the evolution of a financially strong bank that responds to the development needs and priorities of its member countries and during your first three months or 100 days, you jumped into the pool at the deep end. In fact, you started cutting your teeth with a rough file, a visit to St. Vincent and the Grenadines following the devastating April earthquake and volcano eruption visits to member states to share your vision and to offer the bank's assistance in fighting the effects of the COVID pandemic and then became another earthquake in Haiti and another hurricane and you've been to Jamaica now in St. Lucia. Did you take a good job at the bad time? Thanks a lot. One can be tempted to say that, but I think there is really, I like to say there's no good time to do policy and there's no bad time to do policy. Policy just has to be done and so from my vantage point, yes, we have very, very significant challenges that have just come to bear. You mentioned the St. Vincent, Haiti, COVID, the hurricane season that's here. These are all happening at one point, a constellation, but I like to remind people that before COVID we had a lot of issues, structural issues that the region was grappling with and so it's a continuum. The structural weaknesses were there. Then you had COVID that intensified it and I like to say equally there's a futuristic element, which is the whole climate change and the impact that's likely to be there. We really do not have the liberty of time. We don't have room to say, well, we need to settle in. I think the region needs the bank now and so I am here as I have been going out to other countries to stop that process, that consultation, where we can help, how we can help money is an immediate issue and I would have done it the same way if we didn't have COVID, but COVID is not for me an impediment to not go out there because that's what the job is about. Good to hear. Of course, every one of your predecessors, every one of the five would have had enough time to prepare for the mission and in your case you will have entered with a vision and a mission and primary objectives and your vision for the bank calls for three things I've noted, a comprehensive development approach across the region to reimagine for sustainability, to rebalance for systemic integrity and to reposition for competitive advantage and effectiveness. Do you still maintain that tripartite vision or has it been altered by unseen and expected and unavoidable events? And then we have your primary objectives to support member countries through the COVID-19 recovery to contribute more to their harmonious development and growth, and to promote cooperation and integration among them. So how has all that been? Is the bank off to a good start? Well, first, I think the tripartite you talked about, that is a philosophy and because it is a philosophy, it is the bedrock, the foundation of what you do, and so it is not going to change. And I'll explain what I mean by that and probably segue to the second part of the question as to whether we've got enough to, yes. Essentially, we are miniature ecosystems. So we have the big ecosystem, the planet, that if you want a planetary system that has eight now, not nine planets, and that are held together, and they move as one, and that holding together in my mind is simply the result of gravity. So one constant, one system moving together. One planet cannot move one quarter of one degree else. The whole thing goes crazy. So when I say we are miniature, let's think of economies in the same form. An economy now is an ecosystem. And that ecosystem has to be seen as the eight planets or six planets in that particular say I call them spheres. And those spheres need to be held by something equivalent to the gravity that we are talking about. And that something I think for me, if I can pick one word, would be confidence. When that holds, then all the spheres move in tandem. The confidence would be the glue that holds everything together. It's the glue equivalent to the gravity that's holding the planets. But that confidence, once it's there, holds the spheres of the ecosystem together. And so when we start talking about development, which is what we are in the business for, first and foremost, I think we have to start by saying development is a holistic concept. It's not a slice. It's not one aspect. It's a holistic concept. And therefore, by the same logic of what we are saying, you cannot leave any part of development behind. It has to be the whole thing. And so I've started from that perspective and says, because it's an ecosystem, and because we need to target all things at the same time, we need to be able to understand how do things go forward? Now, how do things go forward is a function of that anchor that we talked about. We are in the line with an objective of sustained economic development. Now, what exactly does sustained mean? For it to be sustained, it means you need to be able to keep it at a steady level. If it's going to stay at a steady level, you think of a plane flying, all the engines have to be such that it can stay at that level. Now, it can drop a little, as planes do, when they go down altitude, but you must be able to come back up. If you cannot come back up, then it means you cannot sustain yourself. You're going to fall and then you crash. So, sustainable development translates now to resilient development. In other words, without resilience, the ability to bounce back when you take a dip, or if you are going too fast to move back down, that sort of stain in that corridor, if you don't have resilience, then you really cannot attain sustainability. And to be able to rebuild, to be able to allow yourself to propel forward, I think there's only one game in town, and that's the game of innovation, because innovation is what allows you to transform what you know into something that you are doing and make it better. And so, it's that transformation that allows you now to maintain change when you're too high to too low, you drop to go back as a means of keeping that sustained effort that we are talking about. So, I've narrowed this down into essentially those three words. Sustained development is promoted through resilience, and resilience occurs through innovation. Now, once you establish that, and that's now your platform, the question really is, how do you affect that? And that's where the methodology of the tripathide comes in. It says first, I need to know where my goal is. What does sustained economic development mean? And that is simply the question of reimagining. And reimagining says, we say we re-imagine for sustainability. I told you what sustained meant. Reimagined for sustainability now says, what do we need to conceptualize? What do we need to think about? To maintain sustainability. To keep us with a concept of sustainability. So that's the reimagining component. Now, the fact that we are here today, it means that we are not clearly in a sustainable state, because that's where we want to go. So there has to be, therefore, some tensions that exist in that ecosystem where part is in front, part is behind. And so you need to first redress that. And that's the rebalancing phase. Rebalancing says, we know we are not yet there. What we now need to do is to maneuver, shift, rebalance to now put us on the beginning of a track going forward. And now once we can rebalance, we get to the third phase. The third phase now is your repositioning, because you are clearly not yet where you want to be. But now you need to reposition to get you to where you want to be, which is now the trajectory that you're going to do. So my concept of the reimagining, rebalancing and repositioning, as I say, is a philosophy. And that philosophy now is how do I guide a trajectory to take me from where I am to the next stage. And so that's the basis of that perspective. The natural question, which is your second question is, in the first 100 days, I guess, what can we say in terms of that process? In terms of application of that view. And the application has to, I think, have two parts. The first is to recognize that where we are now in a COVID state, which as we said has aggravated the previous structural issues we had, we are in rescue mode. Rescue means what can we do now to simply help countries survive. And that's what the international community, the CDB, the governments have been putting together, lockdowns, purchase of equipment, restrictions, and that kind of stuff. But once you move from recovery, from rescue, you need to go into recovery, which in a sense is a type of rebalancing that we are talking about. But it's not yet the repositioning. And so... It's like following a hurricane. You rescue first... Precisely. Then you recover, you bring things together, but then you need to move to the next stage, which is the repositioning. And because I've said that that sustainable growth that we are talking about is built on resilience, we have mapped out, and as I have been discussing with all governments that I go out, we have mapped out there are five key elements of resilience that define this ecosystem that we are talking about. The first is social resilience. And social resilience is focused as it were on people, health, education, skills, development, gender-related issues, inequity, rural, urban, tensions, security. All of those would fall under social resilience. And by that we are saying, when any one of those things are not optimal, we need to find ways of bringing them back. Else you stay in that lower state that you never recover from, and therefore you can never attain the sustained notion that we are talking about. Unrecoverable zone, precisely. So social resilience is one. The second, they call it productive capacity resilience. And we can all identify with that. It says a hurricane wipes you out, you cannot produce, because your capital has been wiped out. So you need again a way of pulling yourself out of that to a state that you can sustain. The third is financing resilience. And financing resilience is about now the ability to access and raise funds when you need it to allow you to go to the next stage. Then we have institutional resilience. And institutional resilience now is very, very key, because as we can see now, capacity to implement has fallen, or maybe has never been there. And that is part of the whole institutional structure of government, of economies that are down, but need to be boosted. So how do we do that? And the last element is environmental resilience. And that's to do clearly with what people are talking about the climate. But notice how I have talked of five things. Social, people, capital, finance. There's production in terms of how I blend those together. Institutions that make it happen. The environment within which we live. These are elements that make up an ecosystem. So far with me. So that ecosystem is what we need to be able to keep moving. And so when we talk then of resilience for growth, I'm saying we need to tackle all of those elements. We cannot leave any one of them behind. But clearly there are many elements in that bag. And so we cannot really talk of doing all of them at one time. In fact, we won't have money to do all of them at one time. So it forces us to say we need to prioritize. We need to indicate which we want to do now, which is more urgent, which is more relevant. And so on that basis, CDB has now agreed and we are pushing forward an agenda that we believe is mapping some of those. And we are saying to governments, this is what we think the region should be focused on. So that's now as it will be bringing it more concrete. The first is under the social resilience bucket. We think the most important element to be worked on is education. And I would say health with it, because you need health to do everything. But education is for me the prime social resilience element that we would like to highlight. Institutional for development. Exactly. Institutional resilience, we think we need to tackle the implementation capacity deficit for too long, for too many decades, not years, decades. Anybody who tells you anything about the region, it's implementation, implementation, implementation. So we need to make that a pillar to build resilience. The third, obviously, is climate resilience. So we need to champion the whole idea now of how do we generate this climate change aspects, embed it, mainstream it in all policies. The fourth is productive capacity. And in productive capacity, I think we need to pull out one thing, economic diversification. How do we promote economic diversification? And the last, of course, when you pull those together is resilience now to managing external shocks, which comes essentially from a broad-based set of economic policies that you put together. So you have elements, not the totality, but elements from each of those fares that we talked about with the exception of finance, that we are championing as elements that are needed to allow us to take that ecosystem going forward. And on the financial side, that bucket of financing is, I'm treating it separately, because it's not totally within the control of the governments. It may require capital from the private sector, capital from donors in terms of concessional financing, our own capital in terms of CDB, whether it's from retained or from membership or new capital injection. But we can blend those and marry those together and say we now have an integrated perspective of an ecosystem that if we implement policies on will actually give us a high chance of maintaining this sustained economic development that we are talking about. And once you've laid that agenda, which is what I have been doing for the last 100 days, starting with the inaugural and with the various governments that have been going to even summer on the duress. Once you've laid that agenda, then it is now a matter of getting consensus, building a dialogue, engaging with the governments on what they would like to do that fit those structures and providing advice, working with them where we can on financing. And at the same time, technical assistance, the three things that CDB does as a means now of trying to help them create craft, now a internally consistent set of policies that can meet those goals while at the same time ensuring that the development ecosystem can actually proceed. So that in a nutshell is I think where we are. So if I can, I don't want to give myself a score, but I'd surely say we have started that dialogue. Reaction response has been positive, I think so far. Of course, the devil is always in the details, but I think you need to first establish that framework. And if you have a framework and you can start breaking down, then every government can exercise its right as sovereign governments to propose, and we can be the trusted advisor, helping them think through, checking what they are doing, how they intend to do it. And hopefully we can overcome this implementation deficit issue we talked about, and we will actually get things done. And so I would say let's see how the next year, two years go, but I am very encouraged and hopeful that I think we... And optimistic. And optimistic that we have an opportunity to make a change and a difference in the region going forward. When I read your bio ahead of your taking office between your appointment, selection, election and the time, I can't remember seeing anywhere that you were school principal. But you have in the last few minutes taken us through astrology, geography, economics, social science, politics, sustainability, environment, climate change. I mean your entire 35 years was presented in less than 35 minutes. But some of the issues that you have raised go into the other one that I want to talk about, and that is going forward. You said about going forward back in May that the bank would need to emphasize innovation, generate and refine new ideas and create opportunities, enhance measurement and evaluation for more effective implementation, foster effective partnerships and knowledge sharing to promote transformation, to build on the region's collective ingenuity and experience and to improve the quality of life for the bank's citizens. This sounds like a wholesome 21st century manifesto for Caribbean development and improving the lives of the tens of millions of citizens of borrowing member states. But how feasible is this among borrowing member countries of vast differences ranging from the size of population to economics in a constantly changing world system that's not been kind to developing countries like the Caribbean? It sounds like a big bite to me. Are you sure the bank won't choke? Not at all. First, let's understand what this really boils down to. One is, you say, 10 million lives. But that is exactly what we should be wanting to do. That's the essence of where we are going. We want there to be sustainable livelihoods for all, period. Across the board. Across the board. You want there to also be a sense of connectivity that says as a people, as a region, we know, we understand, we can identify with each other. In the same way, we can talk of global connectivity at the digital level where we can say we would like to be in a point where every person in the region has access to broadband. And we can equally well say we want us to be an innovation hub, a place where innovation thrives. Now, I mean, I put them in that form, but those to me, those four things, the connectivity, the sustainable livelihoods, the innovation hub that I talked about being agile, nimble, these are goals that we can set ourselves. Now, the moment we can set those goals, the question is, how do we set those goals? We can set those goals purely from the principle of our imagination, unbounded imagination, which is what I think we as a people can claim to. We have adequate and sufficient intellectual capacity that we can state we can only be limited by the lack of our imagination or conversely, how far we can aspire is only limited by our unbounded imagination. And so if I start from that perspective, then those big ticket items that I talk about, that is my imagination of what I think I see people being. As long as I can get there, I tend to describe that as fertile imagination, fertile imagination. As long as I can get there, then everything we say is possible. The only way we can now make it happen is through the two tools we said, resilience and innovation. And that is where the innovation comes in. And so I think of this as a three-tier structure. It's not as big as it sounds. The first tier is resilience. And I've already told you the different buckets of resilience will chip away at it one every year. So time, it may take time. It's not going to happen overnight, but we chip away at it. The second tier now is to say once we know it's resilience, the question really is what is the foundation that we need to be able to build that resilience? And that foundation is captured in a phrase I use in my inaugural, measure better to target better. Now measure better to target better says, if I want to get somewhere, I want to target something, I need to be able to measure it. I need to know what it's about, what it's influenced by, how do I change it? So that's that measurement side and understanding, and that's a foundation. And that understanding is, in essence, I want to be able to link this to the SDGs, because that's a measure of what we want to be. But even SDGs, if you think about this well, we talk of meeting the United Nations Special Development Goals. The SDGs, we name them, but nobody is saying where exactly do we need to get. Is it to the best in the world? Is it to a threshold? Is it to the top 10 percent? We are not defining that. We need to set our targets. You need to set your targets. Now to set the targets, I need to equally know, well, what do I need to get there? Supposing I say it's to be in the top 10 percent, supposing that's our target, then I need to have a concept of a distance to metric. That distance now says, this is where I am. This is how far I need to get to that threshold I'm talking about. What will it take? How much will it cost? And that now defines, as it were, the entirety of what the government now needs to decide. If this is the target, how do I get it into my budget, into my planning, and how do I start now getting the funds to be able to get that to do? So that foundation, which is the measure better to target better, requires, as it were, data or knowledge. And that is where we enter the picture. We have actually started the process of a data hub, which I imagine will grow into a knowledge hub, that will be everything Caribbean, everything Karikom at the CDB that now can be used for this evidence-based decision-making that we are talking about. So that's the foundation. And then to use that foundation, you need facilitators. What can facilitate our pathway to getting to that resilience that we talked about? And one of those facilitators is simply partnerships. We cannot overnight leapfrog on our own, because then you need to build a base. And building that base where there's resources, skills, takes time. By the time you get there, it's already history. The world has moved on. So we need to think of mobilizing and leveraging partnerships across the world. Regional... Stakeholders. Yes. Stakeholders, institutions, knowledge providers, financiers. As a means now of saying, suddenly overnight, we have mushroomed our control of resources available. And that now can help us tackle some of the big ticket items we are talking about. Another facilitator is governance. The stronger your governance structure, the better you will be able to effect and generate those things that we are talking about. So even if the list you read has a number of things in there, it really is about what are the three, four resilience targets that you have. Building that foundation, and you'll be doing that from now until it's not going to end. And working on the facilitators like the governance and the partnerships and the ability and agility of thought of changing the culture, the mindset of the people. It's those facilitators that will eventually help us to be able to reach those resilience buckets and generate the sustained growth that we are talking about. So I like to think of it as free. Foundation, facilitator, ultimate goal, which is the resilience buckets. As can be seen, I'm actually enjoying this lesson because you've just taken me back to school days again, measuring in terms of getting to your root and defining the way you get to your objective. Measurement of time and time over distance, constant speed. Absolutely. And we're going to be talking now about how the bank touches Caribbean citizens because in all that we have done here, we have mentioned phrases and concepts and philosophies and millennium development goals, special development goals. These are not issues that the average citizen of the bank's member countries would take time off to consider. So how do you explain all what we've been discussing to the average Caribbean citizen in the member countries who didn't go to college or university, have to work more than eight hours a day every day for a living and just don't have the time on their hands to keep up with the changes in regional and international banking, financial and economic developments that matter to them and that really affect them. So how do you convince us that the CDB is not just another costly, well-paying, big, broad, massive and large bureaucratic, regional, multinational and multilateral banking entity, but a regional institution that touches each and every one of us every day? Well, I mean, you pose a very good question, but if somebody could rattle out all of those adjectives about the bank, I mean, they obviously have a lot of time to think. But no. But we're talking about average citizens. But please, the average citizen, let's equally be clear, it should not be their job to find out about what the bank is doing. Their role is to benefit. Their role should be one to benefit and be told. And I think that's an area we probably have not done enough of. So much so that I believe if you were to do a quick survey along the street and say to people you meet, do you know what CDB is? Don't tell them the full Caribbean Development Bank. Just CDB. I think you'd probably find 90% of people would probably not know. And if you went further and said, well, CDB is the Caribbean Development Bank, do you know what it does or where it is? I probably think another 90% would probably not know. Which tells me that we have not done a good job in telling and reminding people what the bank is about, how it touches their lives, what's going on. And I think that's an element that is weak at CDB, but equally weak in an entire policy space. So much so that I tend to argue communications is the missing policy in economic policy. You cannot say I have fiscal and monetary and exchange rate and all these other policies. And you cannot communicate it. So we need to elevate communications policy to equal footing with other policies. And so for me at the bank and I have charged my communications group, I need to see communications outreach sharing of what we do just as important as a loan and whatever technical assistance we are providing. And so their job is to make sure that we reach the man on the street. Now we love to think of innovative ways of making sure we can reach all the audiences, whether it is print or digital or verbal, but communication sharing has to be paramount. I was even giving them a simple thing like we are undertaking a project building a school. What better way to be able to convey that by taking pictures. And it doesn't have to be fancy photographic line. A simple phone, telephone or mobile phone capture of that project from the time you break ground at different stages all the way up to when the ribbon is cut. Now supposing you simply put those together in a data bank. At the end of the story you bundle it as a series of slides from beginning to end. You now have a visual of what does it mean to build a school, an immediate lecture for any student learning to know about construction. When I see a building it didn't just happen. These are the stages of occurring. And if you have a before and an after picture you can get a sense of transformation, what it did to a community. So we can start thinking more about those, start telling people and making little stories, reaching out to communities, let people tell the story. What was life like before? We have a basic needs trust fund that focuses on improving small communities, getting rid of or changing, reducing poverty and making livelihoods more sustainable, community based. What if we could get them to simply say what was life like before, life now? And that is a story we should be telling. So we are building this concept of storytellers, building the idea of reaching out, explaining things in language appropriate for the audience. And if we can do that then I think over the years, it won't happen overnight, over the years I would like to see us at a point where CDB is not only the institution that was charged, mandated to ensure the harmonious economic development of the countries, but that the people of these countries know CDB is that institution that helps develop these countries. And they should be able to see it, identify with it, live it, feel it and be able to tell a story about it. So communications there for me is key. And as I said I think we should be being proactive and putting that information out, not expecting the person to go searching and so on. There will be people who want to do searching and the data hub and so on will help that process of discovery, but we should equally now be allowing the passive recipients to be flooded as it were with information that will give them a sense of where the bank fits. An encouragement to feel not just touched but also be involved because I can't tell you from my experience with the bank before your arrival over several decades that the number of programs that the bank has in every boring member state you have your individual national programs, you have regional programs, and then they're broken down into everything from economic and financial programs down to your cultural innovations, et cetera, et cetera. And like you said, the ability to tell those stories in a messaging form that will bring the information about the appreciation of the bank's work to the staff, to your over 200 staff, they would get a chance to see the effect of their work. And there is evidence of that. I could also indicate that from your arrival here the department has been working. I did get to know yesterday that you had met with the prime minister and minister of finance, the entire cabinet of ministers, and so on. We'll get back to that later. But I'd like to go to one of the central points that I was glad to hear you say doesn't power you and you will not treat it like most people do as something that confuses us so much that we just give up and hope it goes away. And I'm talking about your COVID strategy the bank is committed under your leadership to ensure a boring member countries survive COVID, but also to recover, survival and recovery. Earlier we were applying that to your outlook. And the question is how has the first 100 days been against the background of the cumulative effects of the 17 months of the pandemic across the region and with the Delta variant having landed or heading for virtually every member state to what extent might you have to go back to the drawing board at will. Would that require I know you've said you're not going to see it as a stumbling block but there's a difference between what you would like to see and what actually is. There's no need to to go back to the stumbling block today drawing board purely because I think when and we we should not be seeing it as a 100 day event because yes it's true COVID now for maybe 18 months 18 months. When COVID started I think there was probably no one that was thinking COVID would still be around in a year's time. Okay, that was not there. And so the solutions that were being put forward for COVID at that time was one this is likely to be temporary. So let's first focus on keeping people alive. So spend money on health systems, purchase medication, PPEs, the protective equipment and then livelihoods in terms of businesses. If a business because you had to be shutting down and you didn't want to spread so activity commerce was obviously squeezed. So they would say well let's give institutions the means to continue to survive and that took different forms whether it was allowing banks to forbear on loans or giving tax breaks or deferring taxes so that those or grieving grants so those institutions could could stay but that very message was super clear. You could not obviously sustain that for a long time and so what was meant to be rescue before you started recovery has now become almost prolonged or permanent rescue mode and so while we started that way I think there was always in the back of people's minds a sense that you needed to start recovery going forward and recovery meant now how do I reduce change whatever the extra debt for example that I would have built to forgive people social protection look after the businesses increase expenditure on health and so on but you cannot obviously sustain that so we were looking anew all along that debt ratios were going to jump and even in the case of St Lucia or the region as a whole debt GDP ratios rose by a good 20 percentage points putting almost every country in danger zone now the question I think what we needed to think through a little more is what if COVID did not end what if COVID took five years to clear out could we sustain those debt levels at that higher elevated level and obviously the answer to that is probably no now what does that mean does that mean you default or does that mean you forbear or does that mean you now say I need strong commitments in policies that when we turn the COVID corner you will actually now start to read balance and get yourself to a particular state and so I think that concept was there maybe not fully articulated and what we did at the bank was follow that same narrative that same script we provided loans what we call our policy based loans we provided emergency loans we provided grants and we did um read debt relief whereby countries that owed the bank we put a pause to say you you don't pay us now or at least for a year to at least give you room and time to use those funds to do something else but that one year is over yeah and so now we need to be thinking I guess your question what do we do now do we reinstate that and if you reinstate it now what does it mean for the bank as it's a balance sheet but if you don't reinstate it what does it mean for the governments and that now need to start paying that still have the same COVID expenses and now a higher debt because they've had to borrow over that year so what does it mean it means that to be very blunt a number of countries their fiscal position is rather tenuous because the the the point where you allow them room to do something that they should not ordinarily have been doing to manage COVID expecting COVID would have been shorter now is prolonged means that these governments are going to struggle and so we do need to dig deep deep deep in and help think with them what about conditionality in a situation where you're giving a one-year grace period can you as the bank say to the borrowing member state listen we're giving you that one-year grace period but while we say you can use it to do things you would not normally have had the money through we could also see to you there are things you cannot do with it yeah I mean we could say that and I mean in general there has always been equally the expectation I remember George Aver the managing director of the IMF popularizing the phrase spend but keep the receipts so you because there will need to be there will need to be audits there will need to make sure that the money was well spent it is not just giving an open checkbook it was spend but spend on a particular item because the first and foremost objective was to sustain keep people alive now that was the the first objective now the objective is maybe not just keep people alive it is now put in place the systems that can sustain that so there's a little pivoting that's taking place a little rebalancing that's taking place but I want to bring something to your attention we cannot focus on rescue and recovery and stop we have to do the full line is rescue life recovery and repositioning and that is now where this thing gets really really complicated because recovery is not growth and let me let me explain that to you recovery is not growth take the case of St. Lucia which we can understand in 2020 we had a 20% fall in GDP so let's say we are at 100 20% means we are down at 80 numbers wise how do we get back to 100 requires 25% growth you fall by 20 but you have to grow by 25 that 25 is not going to occur in one year it's not going to occur in two years I would wager it probably would not occur in no more than no less than four years because on average we have not been growing six seven eight nine ten percent annually okay so but the key point here to note is that four years of recovery yeah four years of recovery has not gotten you any further than where you were back to your 100 back to your 100 okay so if I look now at the time series and I'm talking of growth over time and I get to the point of 2019 pre-covid and I get to 2024 let's say post-covid assuming it's post and I am still at 100 it shows zero growth you haven't grown zero growth okay but over those four years I have been growing if you want three five six percent recovering but you are recovering from that disaster that hit you 20% and it's not just recovering you've been spending money investing borrowing borrowing increasing debt to get that recovery but at no growth so we cannot ignore the second third stage the repositioning to genuinely grow beyond that 100 that we had and that is where the calculus gets very very tricky government packages need to see the rescue function need to see the implications of recovery and now need to see the repositioning beyond where you now have genuine growth because our ultimate goal is not recovery our ultimate goal is not zero growth our ultimate goal as we said is repositioning no sustained sustained economic growth repositioning for sustaining economic growth absolutely so it is that marriage that we need to keep in mind and policy makers need to see because you may have to make decisions that start the process of repositioning while you are undertaking the process of recovery even while at the same time you are undertaking rescue and a quick line you you have a building that collapses and you are starting your you're starting your rescue operation you are sending in the detractors and they are now digging for hopefully survivors at that time you are equally starting the process of so where will I house those people do I have the necessary shelters or the hospital or the the food supplies and after you've done that you are equally at the same time now saying I need to be starting to think codes building codes how do I make sure that doesn't happen in the future my resilience concept okay but all of those three things are happening even if we are only seeing one the rescue the rescue which is these guys going in but the genuine policy makers now are handling all three things at one and the same time and it's the same story with covid we we have to be thinking policies that are tackling rescue recovery repositioning for the future at one and the same time it's not sequential but it means you're doing more than the average person is expecting you to do and it means you need more resources gives me two two two examples that I can apply here one is that from time immemorial we've grown as Caribbean people to expect hurricanes season every year and the level we've been prepared over the years is to prepare for the hurricane precisely have your food and have your groceries yeah but it is it has never gone beyond the expected damage yeah how do we recover and reposition yeah I have a very good local investor friend who makes the point is that new people walk around the town and they see empty lots but every empty lot he sees he imagines what he can build on it imagination again okay imagination yeah and because that potential is the seed of tomorrow and if he keeps that imagination dream going he'll start thinking of design purpose why who will sit in that space what do they want how can I make them happy so that fertile imagination is the beginning the creation the seeds that takes us to the next phase of creation that is innovation it is that we have to embrace but and now you you mentioned this I'm not just saying we need to imagine remember I said that our focus is on education we have to start thinking really how do we change our education systems what we teach what do we teach how do we teach it so that students that are growing from primary through secondary to vocational tertiary have this inquiring mind that talks about now discovery and problem solving and imagination and thinking outside of what we know because that is the only way we can advance is thinking beyond what we know when we are operating strictly in where what we know we are passive users of knowledge what we need is to transform ourselves to active creators of knowledge and that is the sense of innovation that is why I am saying learning education is so critical and that is the one space that again we have been missing is the one space that we do not have a comparative disadvantage we lament small size we are too small we cannot compete we lament we haven't got resources we cannot compete so be it but if we have no comparative disadvantage in knowledge creation why can't we focus on using knowledge creation knowledge services as a way of competing and can compete globally why not oh and we can and we can precisely the point we can because I I have we can I have for the last 25 years been saying to the respective people in charge at the Ministry of Education following regime change every five years that as a journalist every year I looked out to four the results of the annual science competitions where students secondary students are asked to come up with innovative solutions to problems right right and then they go through the innovative thought process they come up with experiments they identify problems in the community or the country and they come up with the solutions yeah solutions that work yeah because they win the prizes because the judges have judged that they won yeah but my problem is that by the time they have won the prize yeah it goes into a back room yeah so this is this is where this is where I think when I say an innovation hub that's my dream can the region be that place where innovative ideas not only are created but can now be affected sold as strategies that can be patented and earn funds we don't have to do everything we are small we cannot in essence build everything but what if we can just be creators thinkers that can produce those have them sold we can be exporting capital and there's no reason why we cannot do that rather than rather than being in a situation where we have learned to live with the fact that the steel band copyright is in Japan precisely now why why did this why did this ever happen when we have all of this knowledge of steel band music architecture tuning and so on in Trinidad we didn't take it to the next step of one pulling out the relevant elements of this that can now be said to be the discovery element of the knowledge and didn't take it to the strategy level where we now say we can create strategies create industries out of this somebody had to come from Japan to see the benefit the knowledge that's in there the opportunity and now create patents that are in Japan I mean this is I think a real missed opportunity but we have the potential to build on that and if we can see this is our focus we can have a totally different development paradigm where we can genuinely compete and takes us outside of the box of boundaries because now part of our problem of small size and boundaries is we operate in jurisdictions what I think the digital divide has provided which is why for me that digital connectivity is you have an unbounded space there are no boundaries no limits and we we need to be thinking big why do we need to say our diaspora diaspora I'd prefer to think of them as just people living somewhere on the planet and we should be able to have the diaspora work for at home elsewhere work elsewhere we've just done remote working in COVID at least that's a start why can't we then say somebody in New York who is Caribbean wants to work on the Caribbean can stay and enjoy living in New York but is working in the region all through connectivity of digital technology but it will raise the question of whose product is that work who do they pay taxes to who controls regulates manages what that person does doesn't do so they love to be a very big concerted aspect of governments now to start talking of harmonization of digital spaces because it's no longer ownership of sovereign territory that we are talking about but just think of what it might mean in terms of our ability now to as we said genuinely compete in creation of knowledge products across the world because you know we have people at every university I can think of that have stood toe to toe with the best and the brightest of the country anywhere in the world now if we have demonstrated we can do that right and no one can turn around and say no the Caribbean people didn't do well we have demonstrated that why can't we utilize leverage that and now say let's take this now I don't want to say we are better so I don't want to use comparative advantage we do not have a comparative disadvantage okay we do not have so at least on our equal level playing field let us leverage that and I think we can leverage that through the power of reimagination noting that our only limit of constraint is our unbounded imagination in in a sense and then we can say let's now rebalance where we are towards putting us in that other space but now reposition for the future building that future creating it you know as someone once said you your best way to predict the future is to create it and I think I think we have an opportunity to create it and we all of you what you've said has proven that we do have that opportunity realities the reality stares us in the face and what we've been talking to up to now are the things that we can do the things that we can manage the things that we can create I'd like to move into one area time is still on our side but we have to manage it and I want to go into climate change because climate change continues to change life across the region with global warming and rising sea levels more frequent and devastating weather patterns while the tectonic plates continue to shift below Haiti how is the bank addressing the need to help member states recover and build resilience after suffering hurricane damages earthquakes and volcano eruptions uh in those in these even more perilous times what assurance is did you give dr gonzales no I mean we we have to be able one to to say to two countries that we have to continue to look for resources that can meet crisis situations whether it's the earthquake or hurricane so we need we need funding in a bucket if you can call it a disaster resilience type bucket that is specifically a map for that but that really falls in the rescue mode now when it comes to when it comes to recovery now you want to be able to say equally to governments we need to have a separate if you want bucket of funds that now can help you recover and that may very well mean funds on a different set of conditions funds maybe that are provided in trust or otherwise from donors and and that kind of stuff and drawn down on only exactly at points of need and then there will be as it were now other funding bucket streams that can see now governments in their own line want to do certain projects it could be um individual but I think we need to start thinking more the regional projects that can help address one of my equal areas integration as to how we can become we can get more benefits from that integration project that that we have so the climate change part is is live we we need to see it not as something we can do on our own and so the concept of partnerships with for example green climate fund the european investment bank the various donors and institutions that are providing funds for climate related activity equally within our own space what governments can provide by incentives that can help for example renewable energy as a means of tackling emissions which eventually can help indirectly reduce climate change I mean it's it's a whole mix and I think what we can do here is simply to be able to one know everything we need to know about climate change and so I think we need to be a look which is a learning process so learning process but at the same time but there's enough around that we can work with now that you can pull call it have it housed in one place and now say we we are a locus point for climate change studies climate change policy because it reveals itself in so many ways exactly across the region so I'd like to see the bank take that space we don't want to be the the scientific aspect of climate I mean university has those centers and people who are studying this but we should be able to co-op them partner with them into a cdb concept that now looks at implications impact on economies and what sorts of policies can be now used to build climate resilience and how we can facilitate that whether it's through projects through building stronger c defenses and that that sort of stuff but we are in the space we are looking to broaden it looking for funding to strengthen it and the governments are equally told every step along the way that we are with them we will provide whatever support we can and where we don't have and we can reach out to other institutions we'll do that to try to channel resources and knowledge to the the borrowing member countries yeah well let's go into that other aspect of the interview that our viewers will certainly enjoy as much as they have with the ways in which you have simplified the lessons about the bank its mission your vision your starting up and of course we've heard from you how your first hundred days have gone but finally you're back home again yeah and like sir Arthur as a visitor to your homeland the job involving you living in and out of a suitcase from country to country continent to continent over the past 35 years and now back in the region like sir Arthur did you live and work in and out of Barbados so what's a visit home like for you meeting family and friends and fellow youth and students from the A level college nowadays Arthur Lewis Community College driving around the island going to the castries market climbing the pitons or none of the above and simply hour and hour and hour and hour meaning rest and rest and more rest and relaxation maybe all of the above but um no this trip in particular um there there hasn't been any time for an hour it's not a holiday it's not a holiday so um i'd want to separate this trip from um from i would say future trips Barbados is close by i'd love to be able to come home fairly um regularly uh one of the things i haven't done um you mentioned the pitons i've climbed it a few times go piton but i i'd love to do uh mon gimi at some point um so i would i would maybe target that as one of my my future trips well i'll keep man at pitometer and that's more manageable i mean for this trip probably i'll be here until monday morning so i definitely want to go down to show as i was able to see my aunt um i have two aunts in the in the village that would probably be family related i have a brother who is i'm up here that i will see you know calyxed um leon um so that's probably about it but in terms of the hour and hour the the um entertainment side getting to meet friends and so on i think that will probably have to be on a second at a later time yes in fact like we said earlier um move here you've met the prime minister and minister of finance the entire cabinet um you have reiterated the bank's mission and uh purpose including uh assisting all member countries to not only go through the covid but also to recover um but one of the things you found time to do is to uh visit your old alma mater and how will that feel you haven't done it but i'm sure you intend to speak to while some of your fellow students and uh while they all admit that you top the class one noted that what he called back then he said you had a photographic memory so what made you top class meaning at the top of the class was it your memory or your brain i have no idea um i don't know actually um i think i i used to study study had um although sometimes when i think back i i'm not sure how much i did to be honest i can tell you do you did a lot because those have spoken to all refer to you as being at the top of the class one said that uh in in the field of economics um they would come to you to ask about whether a point was right or wrong and you would recite an entire chapter to them um but i'm sure you're gonna enjoy uh moving around at your alma mater my final uh issue i want to uh raise with you is that you know when you first packed your suitcase to put your schooling to work abroad you must have had an ultimate objective and goal in mind did you ever see yourself following in sarah's footsteps heading the kybe and development bank after 35 years of practically living out of your suitcase from country to country and continent to continent not not really um i think sarah for got on my radar much much later when i was um after i'd finished actually my my first degree in london i i got excited about thinking of a phd project um and i i reached out to sarah for that time and um i i was squarely in the in the zone of um i'm going to use a big word her econometrics which is the statistical application mathematical application of economic theories and um that was the holy grail the the um perfection and um if you want would that have been science and numbers yes yes it would be in that sense and i reached out to sarah for and says i would uh he was at princeton at the time and said i i really would want him to be my external supervisor because i i wanted to in a sense follow on him and he wrote back very nicely and said um he he would have loved to do it but he he doesn't he doesn't have any appetite for these equations and econometrics and so i should find somebody that is uh that is better better schooled in that way he didn't recommend dead shoots no no no no but no i i didn't start off there but i think um over time the the whole concept of uh development and advancing which really is what sarah for became moon for has been at the front of of my mind um so much so that now i i say i have taken this concept of unbounded imagination uh and the infinite supply of knowledge which is the foundation of the the whole philosophy have been um expounding um as coming from sarah for's unlimited supplies of labor except that the the labor is not really unlimited in supply the labor is at the agrarian into industrialization low wage low value added side and the knowledge to me is high value added unlimited boundary that can take us to the next level in a much different way and i said that the onthink seminar we had here a couple months ago if sarah for was around i am sure he would have seen um education and knowledge as the golden child for for development but that is time labor the abundance of labor was what was the the key but i think we need to pivot uh from abundance of labor to unlimited supplies of knowledge and unbounded imagination of our people as what we drive um development going forward but i tell you something mr president um and this is perhaps the best part of it because Haiti i would like to think i'm correct in saying is the biggest foreign member country with a population population wise um of around 10 million at home and abroad today uh but english isn't their main language correct this is what we've been talking communicating um and and and and and messaging in so how do you assure the Haitians um you know it's it's it's it's citizen victims of tectonic natural and human induced disasters in the age of climate change and changing weather patterns um how do you tell them that the cdb is there for them and they could always bank on that idea sir um I don't know if I'm going to be able to speak to them as often as possible. So, I don't know if I'm going to be able to speak to them here. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to speak to them here. But maybe when I started to say, I was holding on to the story that was full of pain. The story has been going on for a long time. It's a story of suffering. I was only suffering because it was normal for a world to suffer. Unfortunately, there was only suffering just now. As we said, I was the one who had this problem. I was the only one who was able to support the development of the work. We were able to help each other, we were able to lower the suffering and the pain. There was no feeling at all. We were able to do all of this to help each other. To make life, I was able to live a better life in Biotejani for a long time. Especially at this moment. After that, I was able to live with you. With all of this, I was able to apply for this job. I was able to give it to everyone who was helping me. I was able to join the commission. Mr. President of Biotejani, I would like to thank you for your attention to this program. Mr. President, we are very happy to have you here today with our mission. At which point, Dr. Jean Leon, we want to thank you, President of the Caribbean Development Bank and Chief Executive Officer for agreeing to converse with us in castries at the NTN Studios for the UA TV Global. I'm Earl Buske thanking you for viewing. Thank you.