BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WHETHER or not Governments within the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) heed the advice of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), that should not and cannot be a determining factor in the bank continuing its role of providing trusted counsel to them.
This is the embodiment of a response given by recently-installed Governor of the ECCB Timothy Antoine who met with members of the media earlier this week.
A journalist from St. Lucia questioned Antoine about whether or not the bank’s proactive stance on providing advice to the different Governments could be construed as “tampering in the politics of a country”.
The ECCB Governor explained that the Governments are the ECCB’s main clients and, as such, it has an obligation to provide trusted and sound advice even if it falls on deaf ears.
“A key role of the bank is to provide advice, trusted advice, and therefore we have an obligation to speak truth to power always. We must do so with respect, but we must do so faithfully so that our role is to ensure that we provide the best possible advice we can to our Governments. And I think the Governments expect us to do that! Now, whether our Governments heed that advise is another matter, because, and I have been in public policy for more than two decades, you give advice sometimes, sometimes it is heeded sometimes it is not.
“Sometimes there are political considerations that the bank may not be fully seized of, that the countries might be fully seized of and that might ultimately influence the final outcome in terms of the decision. We understand that! Those of us who work in public policy understand that, but we must never shirk from providing sound advice to our Governments and let them then decide how best they want to treat with that. So sometimes it will be accepted, other times may not be.”
Using the ECCB as an example, Antoine questioned where the region would have been had it not been for that institution. He said the general hope, however, is that the ECCB, as a trusted entity with a non-political agenda, would be listened to by the Governments of the ECCU.
“We hope, because we are in a position of trust and because we are proactive and because we have no political agenda, that our Governments would listen to us. They trust us and therefore we would influence the domestic agenda, because at the end of the day we cannot achieve some of our domestic objectives domestically.
“In other words, there are regional initiatives which are critical to domestic success. And I think most Governments understand that if they were left on their own to simply do domestic things, they may get certain things done but they will find that they cannot achieve other things because they require regional approaches.”
