Vulnerability Must Be Part Of Criteria For SIDS Access – PM Mottley

(Barbados Government Information Service Press Release) Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has told a high-level meeting that now is the time for vulnerability to be embraced as part of the criteria to determine access for small island developing states.

Ms. Mottley expressed this view on Monday while virtually addressing the UN High-Level Meeting on International Debt Architecture and Liquidity. 

She said the impact of the crisis had been highly differentiated, explaining that it had overwhelmed existing resources for poor people and defied traditional conventions of need.

The Prime Minister suggested that officials must ask for an extension of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) for at least a further 12 months to cover low and upper-middle-income countries with above-average GDP declines due to COVID.

“These extensions would release at least a further $40 billion. We need to systematise a broader DSSI with the official sector agreeing, I ask, for a Barbados-style natural disaster clause in all their lending such that the servicing of debt can be suspended in future for natural disasters and pandemics,” she stated.

Read more at: Barbados Government Information Service

Source: CARICOM TODAY