By Earl Bousquet

   He’d come to the post with over three decades of accumulated experience gathered crisscrossing the world representing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Jamaica, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

   He presented and pursued a vision for the CDB in the immediate, medium and long-term post-Covid and accelerating Climate Change era, to strengthen its regional bonds while expanding its global horizons, sharing experiences and challenges and pursuing new opportunities for solutions to common problems.

   The new CDB President saw the bank recalibrating itself to primarily satisfy its member-states -ranging from risky over-dependence on traditional international financial institutions to diversifying its links with other regional development banks in the Global South.

   Most developing nations shared similar experiences combating the costly effects of accelerated Climate Change and post-Covid Supply Chain disruptions on costs of living and especially food and fuel supplies, worsened by the similar cost-effects of sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

   During a brief visit to Saint Lucia in 2022 to address a joint youth entrepreneurship conference co-sponsored by the CDB and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), Dr Leon offered more light on his thinking, including a greater role for young entrepreneurs in creating new value-added regional food and health products by utilizing more local raw materials.

   Regional reporters enjoyed Dr Leon’s understandable explanations of his visions for the CDB, at every opportunity offering new and interesting formulae for transferring long-held dreams to social and economic realities -and giving practical meaning to overplayed popular phrases like ‘development’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’.

   He advocated the bank enabling the Caribbean to be ever-ready by preparing-for instead of responding-to annual natural disasters.

   After three years at the CDB, Dr Leon was quickly engaged by the leadership of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to help establish a new global development bank tailored for member-states specific sizes and needs.

   The discussions with Dr Leon followed earlier declarations of intent at the last three SIDS summits in Barbados, Mauritius and Samoa.

   The member-states from mainly African, Asia-Pacific, Latin American and Caribbean regions first agreed to establish their own global financial entity at an Inter-Regional Conference in Cape Verde in August 2023.

   Less-than a-year-later, the Fourth International Conference on Small Island States (SIDS4) -in Antigua & Barbuda in May 2024- provided further impetus for the DBRP.

The declared intent is to address persistent institutional challenges facing SIDS -from affordable financing and unsustainable debt, to mobilizing finance for resilient infrastructure, while correcting other economic imbalances and disparities.

   The SIDS4 conference agreed to task Dr Leon with leading the initiative to establish a Development Bank for Resilient Prosperity (DBRP).

   The small-island grouping is together daring the world like-never-before -building a global bank to build and sustain bankable resilient prosperity.

   The DBRP will include at least 12 Caribbean Community (Caricom) member-states and others washed by the Caribbean Sea.

   Dr Leon’s ideas are both new and imperative, based on his long and continuing journey through the ever-changing world of international finance and development banking.

   He learned the nuts-and-bolts of how the global system has operated since the end of World War II -and methodically developed new 21st Century thinking for approaches to solutions for SIDS that stretch beyond their borders and boundaries.

   Dr Leon sees every DBRP member-state as an integral and necessary part of Planet Earth, with untapped natural and national resources that can feed and fund a necessarily-new developmental approach to prosperity for SIDS and other developing nations.

   By Dr Leon’s book, prosperity for developing nations and small-island states can only be sustainable if that sustainability is crafted and charted to be resilient over time.

   Just like the United Nations upgraded its original ‘Special’ Development Goals (SDGs) to ‘Sustainable’ Development Goals, Dr Leon sees the DBRP also redefining how developing banks see themselves -especially those serving the world’s tiniest nations and smallest economies.

   The post-independence era gave birth to development banks in former colonies worldwide, most born with their navel strings attached to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), leading to no-less-dependence after ceremonial independence.

   The five BRICS nations -Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa- together represent the most people on Planet Earth and own the world’s most natural resources.

But the all-powerful new group of developing nations has also had to develop their own New Development Bank (NDB), to better serve member-states and open new doors other developing nations can enter to borrow -on South-South terms and with repayment breathing space.

   Like the 55-member African Union, SIDS represents 39 small-island developing nations, each and together with sufficient voting clout at the UN and other international fora to influence the world’s biggest ears into listening more and better.

   And who better to lead the talking for the SIDS than the highly-credited and proven former IMF representative-at-large and CDB President? The SIDS are certain that Dr Leon’s accumulated knowledge prepared him for his current global assignment.

   His journey since joining the CDB in 2021 is another sterling example of the wisdom of the old saying: ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ It’s still uncertain whether Dr Leon waited, or simply prepared to be ready when the right time came.

   But, whichever, only good things can come out of what the SIDS have been waiting to do; and their decision to enlist Dr Leon to help build the DBRP says they think it’s the right time -and he’s the right man for the job.    Meanwhile, in recognition of his everlasting contribution to regional and international finance and banking and to the new thinking necessary to transition to really-sustainable development today, the Saint Lucia Government last week announced it had appointed Dr Leon to an all-embracing global diplomatic posting, as the island’s brand-new Ambassador-at-Large.