IDB shake-up

Therese Turner-Jones – general manager of the Jamaica-based Caribbean Country Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which oversees the lending agency and development organisation’s work across several English-speaking Caribbean countries – has become the latest high-profile casualty in sweeping personnel changes led by the new IDB president, Mauricio Claver-Carone.

The first American president in the bank’s 62-year history, Claver-Carone is positioning new regional leadership to implement his agenda, termed Vision 2025, which was approved at the first annual meeting of the bank’s governors at which he presided in Barranquilla, Colombia, in March this year.

Turner-Jones, an economist who has come to be known as an experienced, dynamic, visible, and vocal development policy practitioner and advocate, will not have her contract renewed when it expires in a few months’ time, the IDB president confirmed to The Sunday Gleaner in an interview on December 10.

He, however, declined to give the precise date of Turner-Jones’ departure and suggested that while her replacement is expected to be a Caribbean national, a new general manager for the region has not yet been decided on.

“We also have great candidates,” he said, when quizzed on who the next regional general manager will be.

A Bahamian national, Turner-Jones has, since 2016, headed the IDB’s Caribbean office, which serves Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Suriname, The Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago, and has been the bank’s Jamaica country representative since 2013. Before joining the IDB, she worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as deputy division chief for the Caribbean.

Turner-Jones did not answer calls placed by The Sunday Gleaner to her mobile phone, and no responses were received to questions sent via WhatsApp.

The IDB president said that the decision to end Tuner-Jones’ tenure was in the best interest of the institution and has nothing to do with personality. He voiced his frustration with what he regarded as the IDB essentially playing second fiddle in Jamaica to other international development organisations, whose investment in the country he deemed to be less than the regional development bank’s.

Claver-Carone and other high-level IDB officials wrapped up a two-day working visit to Jamaica on Friday after meeting with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke, and representatives of public-sector and private-sector institutions. The visit was part of the process towards the development of a new IDB country programme for Jamaica in light of the 2016-2021 country strategy expiring at the end of this month.

The IDB head said he spent much of the time in those meetings reintroducing the IDB to the Jamaican Government and private-sector counterparts, who were not aware of the full suite of investment, growth, and development solutions offered by the bank. Claver-Carone admitted to being “frustrated” by this situation.

“We are the number one lender and creditor to Jamaica, but we have not been the number one partner to Jamaica in that sense. What I learned being here two days is that frankly, neither the private sector, the Government nor anybody knows the entire list of menu items that the IDB offers across the board, from our knowledge products to our private-sector lending products, etc. There is very limited knowledge in that regard,” the IDB president told The Sunday Gleaner.

He said the change of representation in Jamaica is partly aimed at bridging this gap, while putting people in place to implement his new vision for the bank that de-emphasises lending and highlights growth strategies.

“You are going to see many more Caribbean professionals in leadership positions in the bank than ever in the history of the bank precisely because those people need to reflect the 21st century vision of banking [and] get away from the lending-first practices of the past,” according to the IDB president.

“The amount of talented Caribbean professionals in the bank currently across the board that you’ve never heard of is extraordinary; and they are young, and we are helping them to continue to progress. And we are going to see, very soon, the naming of some senior-level Caribbean professionals at the bank. We need to strengthen the institution, and it has to reflect our Vision 2025,” he said.

New blood

As part of implementing this vision, Claver-Carone said he is changing out general managers, not just for the Caribbean, but also for the southern cone region that serves South America as well as for Central America.

“We need new blood, new professionals who are going to implement the Vision 2025 that we have set forth. Just like any president or prime minister comes to a country and changes their ambassadors, we have the right, and, obviously, we are going to pick professionals that closely fit our vision to implement and take it to the next stage,” he maintained.

Claver-Carone has headed the IDB since October last year, fresh from several high-profile positions in the administration of former United States President Donald Trump. He was put forward by the Trump administration as the American candidate for the job to replace former IDB president, Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, who left the bank on October 1 last year after 15 years in the job. His candidacy was viewed in some circles as a betrayal of the unwritten convention of the IDB head being from Latin America.

Claver-Carone, a Miami-based Cuban American, was elected by 30 of the IDB’s 48 governors after the fizzling of a purported attempt by some Caribbean and Latin American countries to delay the vote and two other potential candidates from Argentina and Costa Rica pulled out of the race, leading to the American being the only formal nominee at the September 12, 2020, virtual election.

Claver-Carone served as US representative to the IMF and as senior adviser to the undersecretary for international affairs at the US Department of the Treasury before taking up the White House post of deputy assistant to Trump and senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs on the president’s National Security Council. In that capacity, he served as the US president’s principal adviser on issues related to Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean – a position in which he is said to have become known for his hard-line stance against Cuba and Venezuela.

huntley.medley@gleanerjm.com