SAN JUAN – More than 200 business leaders and government representatives will gather in St. Lucia next week for a two-day forum organized by the World Bank to discuss sustainable growth in the Caribbean.

“This forum is an opportunity to take stock of the progress made and to identify innovative solutions to ignite growth in the region,” the World Bank’s vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, Jorge Familiar, said Thursday in a statement.

The Third Regional Caribbean Growth Forum will bring together public and private sector representatives from St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Belize, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The previous editions of the forum have “led to the implementation of over 100 reforms in improving business climate, boosting skills and productivity, and enhancing connectivity and logistics,” according to the statement.

Those reforms include: the Grenada Development Bank’s creation of a fund to support small businesses; establishment of a one-stop shop for company registration that helped the Dominican Republic reduce the waiting period from 45 to 7 days; and an assessment of the competitiveness of St. Lucia’s tourism industry.

The forum is organized by the World Bank Group, in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, the Caribbean Community Secretariat, the European Union, and other international agencies.