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Board of Governors sets working agenda and timetable
COSTA DO SAUÍPE, Brazil – The governors of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC) today agreed to move forward with the analysis of a consolidation of all their private sector operations in the IIC and to study the future capital requirements of such a reform.
At the closing of their annual meetings, the Boards of Governors of the IDB and the IIC welcomed the progress made since the 2013 annual meeting, when they instructed management to analyze a reform of their private sector work.
This reform is aimed at maximizing the development impact of the IDB Group´s private sector operations and the efficient use of its resources.
Today the governors defined a series of steps to be taken towards a consolidation, including the hiring of independent experts to advise the IDB Group on different aspects of the reform.
The Boards of Governors includes finance ministers, central bank governors and other high-level officials from the IDB and IIC member countries. The governors met this weekend here in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia.
In a speech to the governors, IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno underscored the key role the private sector is called to play in the quest for sustainable development and equality of opportunities in Latin American and Caribbean countries.
“The region’s business community is clear about its responsibilities in this area, and it knows that the best investment possible is one that leads to erasing poverty and misery,” he said.
“At the IDB we are convinced of the role the private sector plays as an instrument to drive the region’s growth and that is why we have started a reform process to strengthen our capacity to promote development and poverty reduction through it,” Moreno added.
In welcoming the IDB governors to her country, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff highlighted the efforts Latin American and Caribbean countries are making to develop sustainably, “each one in its own way, each one according to its history and each one following its national priorities.”
“The IDB has an important role to play in those national projects,” Rouseff said. “The IDB has a role to play in supporting regional integration projects, considering that productivity is this vision of Latin America and the Caribbean on a course to recovering from years of inequality, the times when its people did not enjoy the benefits of development.”
The IDB Board of Governors elected Brazil’s Planning, Budget and Management Minister, Miriam Belchior, as its chairwoman, replacing Panamanian Finance Minister Frank de Lima. Belchior is the first woman to lead the IDB’s top policymaking body.
In her address to her fellow governors, Belchior noted that while the IDB has traditionally worked primarily with the public sector, “the time has come to take a fundamental step in terms of the IDB group’s work with the private sector.”
At present, the IDB Group’s private sector activities are divided among four separate windows: the Department of Structured and Corporate Finance (SCF); the Inter-American Investment Corporation (IIC); the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) and Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ).
SCF is responsible for the Bank’s non-sovereign guaranteed operations. The IIC specializes in small- and medium-sized businesses; the MIF focuses primarily on microenterprises; and OMJ deals with base-of-the-pyramid projects.
During their sessions the governors reviewed the IDB’s and IIC’s activities in 2013. The Bank approved 168 projects totaling $14 billion while the Corporation approved 71 operations totaling $415 million.
2014 Macro Report
During the annual meeting in Costa de Sauipe the IDB released its latest macroeconomic report, Global Revovery and Monetary Normalization: Escaping a Chronicle Foretold?
According to the report, there is broad consensus among analysts that Latin America and the Caribbean will grow at 3 percent this year and 3.3 percent in 2015, aided by the economic recoveries in the United States and Europe.
Thanks to their policy and institutional reforms, most countries in this region are better poised to take advantage of the strengthening global economy as well as to react positively to any eventual external shocks, the study noted.
Seminars and activities
As part of its annual meeting, the IDB organized seminars on citizen priorities for urban infrastructure development; the participation of SMEs in global trade and value chains; the emerging “women’s economy”; public-private partnerships in healthcare and education; and energy savings in cities and impact investment.
The IDB invited a group of young social entrepreneurs from nine Latin American and Caribbean countries to take part in the annual meeting in Costa de Sauipe, where they had the opportunity to meet government authorities and IDB officials.
During the annual meeting Canada formalized its membership in the Inter-American Investment Corporation and announced a $10 million grant to the IDB Transparency Fund, which assists countries interested in strengthening their accountability systems.
The IDB’s 2015 annual meeting will take place in the Korean city of Busan, by invitation of the Republic of Korea.