Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is in Pana­ma City to at­tend meet­ings of the board of di­rec­tors and the XLVI Au­dit Com­mit­tee of CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, which be­gan yes­ter­day and con­tin­ues to­day.

The CLXXXVII Board of Di­rec­tors meet­ing takes place on De­cem­ber 16 and will fo­cus on re­view­ing and ap­prov­ing CAF’s pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties and bud­get for 2026, along with au­tho­ri­sa­tion of new cred­it op­er­a­tions.

Key items on the agen­da in­clude de­ci­sions on the al­lo­ca­tion of Se­ries “C” shares for Haiti and St Kitts and Nevis, as well as con­fir­ma­tion of Bar­ba­dos’ com­pli­ance with the con­di­tions re­quired to tran­si­tion to full mem­ber coun­try sta­tus. Once ap­proved, Bar­ba­dos would join Trinidad and To­ba­go as the on­ly oth­er full CAF mem­ber from the Cari­com re­gion.

CAF is al­so ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er a slate of sov­er­eign and non-sov­er­eign op­er­a­tions span­ning pri­or­i­ty sec­tors such as en­er­gy, elec­tric­i­ty trans­mis­sion, wa­ter and in­fra­struc­ture, along­side pro­grammes aimed at strength­en­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty and sup­port­ing pri­vate-sec­tor in­vest­ment.

CAF’s board of di­rec­tors com­pris­es rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Se­ries A, B and C share­hold­er coun­tries and is re­spon­si­ble for set­ting the in­sti­tu­tion’s poli­cies. Its man­date in­cludes ap­point­ing the ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, ap­prov­ing cred­it op­er­a­tions, an­nu­al bud­gets, guar­an­tees and in­vest­ments, and over­see­ing ac­tiv­i­ties aligned with CAF’s de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives.

Tan­coo, who cur­rent­ly serves as chair­man of CAF, is pre­sid­ing over both the Board and Au­dit Com­mit­tee meet­ings. He is ac­com­pa­nied by Jim­my Wong, se­nior debt an­a­lyst at the Min­istry of Fi­nance.