BAHAMAS-Regional leaders urged to stop relying on global financial systems.

NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC – Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis urged Caribbean leaders to stop depending on global financial systems he said were not built for the region, warning that survival is no substitute for building institutions capable of shaping the Caribbean’s future, such as a Caribbean Export-Import Bank.

Addressing the 56th Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Development Bank in New Providence under the theme “Forging the Caribbean’s Future,” Davis said the region has spent too long enduring economic shocks, climate disasters and financial constraints instead of reshaping the conditions that produce them.

“The global financial architecture was not designed for us. It was designed without our storms, our scale, and our future in mind. We have been tenants of this architecture across generations, and the rent keeps rising. The rules keep changing without our consent. No outside power is coming to fix it for us,” he said.

“So we are left with one clear path. I ask every governor in this hall to consider it. If we will not write the rules of our own financial future, then we will be left only to discover how to survive within the rules of others. Those who refuse to write the rules will, in the end, become tenants, subjected to a state of perennial survival. There is no easier path. We wait for the house to repair itself.”

Davis pointed to Africa’s creation of its own financial path, citing the African Export-Import Bank as an example of how developing regions can build institutions to serve their own interests.

He said Afreximbank has increased its commitment to the Caribbean from US$3bn to $5bn and has already deployed hundreds of millions of dollars in financing across the region.

He also welcomed discussions about creating a Caribbean Export-Import Bank.

“The future will not belong to those who simply endured it,” he said. “It will belong to those who dared to build it. So let me be clear about where we now stand. This is not a storm to be waited out. It is a tide that has already turned. We do not seek a finer room in another’s house. We are laying a foundation of our own. We do not ask for a seat at a table that others have set. We are building the table.”

“And we are no longer the small, the vulnerable, the high risk on another’s ledger. We are the place where the Caribbean comes to forge its future. That is the name written on the door of this gathering. It should become the name on the door of the house we build.”

The Prime Minister said resilience alone is no longer enough, arguing that a region limited to enduring shocks will remain poorer, more fragile and more dependent than necessary.

“We must build,” he said. “We must deepen our partnership with Afreximbank. We must move from speaking of a Caribbean Eximbank to bringing one to life. We must give this Bank’s plan our political will, not polite applause. And we must finance our children’s ambitions with the same seriousness we give to our debt. We cannot build the future of the Caribbean on the old order. That order is passing, and nostalgia for it is no strategy at all.”

Davis said Caribbean countries face shared economic challenges that no single nation can overcome alone. He argued that uncertainty should be a reason to build, not a reason to hesitate. He said the region must move beyond attracting foreign capital to investing in its own future.

“We must no longer accept that a credit rating built for a continent should decide the fate of an archipelago,” he said. “We must create tools of our own. Regional guarantees. Blended finance. Mechanisms that reward our resilience rather than punish our geography. We should be measured by the future we are willing to finance, not by the disasters we are forced to survive.

“We must use the institutions we already have, beginning with this one. The Strategic Plan of this Bank for the years 2026 to 2035 provides a foundation. We should build on it, not around it. And we must invest in the one asset that no agency can ever downgrade, and that no storm can ever wash away. The mind of a Caribbean child.”