During the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) Forty-Second Annual Meeting held in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, over the period 23-24 May, 2012, CDB, the World Bank and the Inter-American Bank formally signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly support the work of the Caribbean Growth Forum (CGF).

“The Growth Forum, I have argued, is perhaps the singular most important space to share and explore avenues of development for the Caribbean by bringing perspectives from inside and outside the region, and by allowing perspectives from a broad cross section of Caribbean people, to be heard and to be acted upon”.said Warren Smith, CDB President.

The Caribbean Growth Forum (CGF) is an initiative led by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank (WB), and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) in close collaboration with the United Kingdom Agency for International Development (DFID) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), to identify policies and initiatives aimed at inducing growth and creating jobs in the Caribbean region through analytical work, knowledge exchange and inclusive dialogue.

“Through dialogue informed by strong analytics and exposure to global best practice, we hope that the region will be able to chart strategic direction towards knowledge and innovation-based growth. While this is entirely outside the lifetime of the planned one year CGF initiative, our hope is the that proposed policies and new initiatives will be implemented and create a launch pad to stimulate inclusive growth in the medium-term” said Hasan Tuluy, World Bank Regional Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean.

CGF aims to provide a platform for dialogue around the growth challenge with a view to identifying solutions that inspire action.

“We see growth as one of the most important condition that will lead to improving the quality of life of the population, alleviating poverty, conserving the natural resource base, and maintaining macro-economic stability” said Joel Branski, IDB Representative for Barbados.

The Forum will engage a broad group of stakeholders, reaching beyond the traditional stakeholders to other critical players in the dialogue on economic growth including the private sector, the youth, civil society and the Caribbean Diaspora.

The Forum will commence on June 18, in Kingston, Jamaica, with the first Regional Conference and will be followed by the Digital Jam 2.0 event during June 28-30 that will focus on youth and jobs in the ICT sector.