UN General Assembly
2021

He has shown great leadership, and we are grateful that the United States has committed an additional $250 million in the first instance to establish a pandemic fund at the World Bank to proactively address future biological threats and pandemics. But more is needed, and a more organized global machinery is needed, under the auspices of this UN Organization. In my own participation in President Biden’s Summit on COVID, I made it clear that the pandemic has wrecked economies in small island states including CARICOM countries. In some states, more than 20 per cent of Gross Domestic Product has been lost; unemployment has risen; poverty has expanded and demands on the State has multiplied even as revenues have declined steeply. I told the Biden summit that, for our small countries, recovering from the economic effects of COVID-19 will be protracted because hard won economic progress has been greatly reversed. Therefore, building back will be longer and harder for small island states than it will be in larger economies with greater resources.