Caribbean Development Bank (CDB)

MOPAN released its most recent assessment of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) in 2026.

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is the Caribbean’s only indigenous development bank. It has a distinctive mandate to promote economic growth, poverty reduction, sustainable development, and regional cooperation and integration, with particular attention to the region’s less developed members. Established in 1970, CDB now comprises 28 members, including 19 Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) and 9 non-borrowing members. CDB supports its BMCs through a country-driven approach, providing loans, policy-based lending, emergency finance, grants, technical assistance, blended finance and, increasingly, guarantees. Its portfolio is concentrated in transport, education, water and sanitation, energy, agriculture, social protection and public sector reform. CDB is headquartered in Barbados, with a country office in Haiti.

Each of CDB’s BMCs are Small Island Developing States (SIDS), resulting in a challenging operating context. This context is characterised by small populations, limited economies of scale, narrow production bases, high infrastructure costs, small financial sectors and exposure to frequent natural hazards. CDB is distinctive in its ability to channel concessional and blended resources to all BMCs, including middle- and high-income countries, based on multidimensional vulnerability. This aligns closely with the Bridgetown Initiative’s call for more affordable, flexible and shock-responsive development finance. Institutionally, CDB remains small and lean compared with other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) with a staff complement of 268 staff as of December 2025. However, its footprint in the Caribbean is larger than that of other IFIs working in the region.

CDB operates in a complex context characterised by intensifying and compounding vulnerability. The COVID-19 pandemic produced one of the sharpest economic contractions in the Caribbean’s history, disrupting key sectors, increasing import costs and placing severe strain on already constrained public finances. The social consequences of the pandemic have been deep and persistent, including increased poverty, education disruption, heightened inequality, unemployment, gender-based violence, mental health pressures and crime. At the same time, climaterelated shocks have become more frequent and severe, with hurricanes, flooding, drought, sea-level rise and coastal degradation repeatedly damaging infrastructure - reversing development gains and increasing public debt. These dynamics have increased the region’s financing needs and reinforced the importance of resilience as a core development objective.

CDB has taken important steps to align its institutional vision with the region’s resilience agenda. Its Ten-Year Strategy (TYS; 2026-2035), framed around “Transforming the Caribbean for Resilience,” addresses social, economic and environmental resilience objectives. Youth, institutions and climate action are addressed as operational priorities and are supported by a cross-cutting focus on gender, digital transformation, innovation and regional integration. The TYS builds on several sources of evidence, including extensive stakeholder consultations and this MOPAN assessment. The TYS also reflects CDB’s wider reform agenda and President Daniel Best’s vision of institutional “rebirth” through innovation, transformation and long-term resilience.

CDB’s role and unique comparative advantage in the Caribbean have become more central. CDB is widely recognised by BMCs and other partners as a trusted institution with deep knowledge of the region. Furthermore, it has strong relationships with governments and communities and a distinctive ability to channel concessional and
blended finance to debt-constrained countries, including middle- and high-income small island developing states. This comparative advantage is particularly important in sectors where other financing options may be too costly. BMC partners note CDB’s important role in enabling larger investments in infrastructure, education, water and sanitation, disaster response and community-led poverty reduction.

CDB’s financial position provides a strong platform for delivering the TYS and scaling up support for BMCs. CDB has maintained strong credit ratings, robust capital and liquidity ratios, low non-performing loans and prudent exposure management. Recent and planned reforms to its Capital Adequacy Framework and Risk Appetite
Framework align CDB with good practice among leading IFIs. Innovative financial partnerships, including exposure exchange agreements and potential portfolio guarantees, are helping expand lending headroom. These strengths are complemented by improvements in accountability and oversight, including a strengthened independent evaluation function, expanded risk management capacity, reinforced integrity and compliance functions, and progress on results-based management.

Digital transformation has supported institutional resilience. Investments under CDB’s IT Strategy have introduced more cloud-based, integrated systems such as OP365, improving operational management and enabled evidencebased decision making. Planned client and procurement portals offer further potential to streamline engagement with countries and partners, increase transparency and reduce processing times. CDB is introducing a number of dashboards to facilitate stronger portfolio management.

The TYS provides a critical opportunity to address these issues. In delivering on the TYS and CDB Forward, a forthcoming institutional reform initiative, CDB should address five key priorities:

• strengthening its country engagement and adopting a more strategic approach to managing country portfolios;
  
• reforming the human resources management system, workforce alignment and key operational processes, building a clearer understanding of skills and staffing needs while positioning staff to deliver effectively;
• embedding a stronger results culture and treating operational and supervision data as institutional assets;
• positioning itself more deliberately as a regional convenor and strategic partner, particularly for shared
  challenges such as procurement and regional integration; and
• deepening accountability to beneficiaries through stronger community engagement, grievance mechanisms
  and institutional transparency.

To succeed, the reform process will need to be pragmatic, sequenced, appropriately resourced and closely monitored. CDB must be selective and strategic in implementing both the TYS and accompanying institutional reforms to control growth in its administrative budget, take note of absorptive capacity and avoid reform fatigue. Furthermore, it will be important to ensure CDB Forward draws upon external perspectives, advice and analysis,
similar to the approach taken to developing the TYS itself. It should be accompanied by a clear institutional reporting framework that captures not only the actions taken but progress toward clear operational targets.

CDB is positioned to play a pivotal role in advancing resilience across the Caribbean. This will ultimately depend on CDB’s ability to translate strategic ambition and lending headroom into more agile, efficient and results-oriented delivery. The TYS is a critical opportunity to deliver on CDB’s comparative advantage as a preferred partner in the region, leveraging its unique knowledge, experience and business model to forge innovative partnerships across the public and private sectors and advance sustainable development in the Caribbean.