The Caribbean has also earned the unenviable reputation as one of the most natural disaster-prone and high debt regions in the world. Sir Dwight Venner, Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank captures the interaction between natural disasters and debt quite vividly: “Almost every year, we [St. Lucia] have a hurricane season, which can destroy the country’s GDP.
The CBO projections provide a good starting point: They are based on sensible economic and technical assumptions and thus offer a reasonable indication of how the budget is likely to evolve over the next 10 years if economic conditions remain favorable and BIS Review 6/1998  -2-  current budgetary policies remain in place.