NEW ORLEANS − The Inter-American Development Bank concluded its 41st Annual Meeting of its Board of Governors today on an optimistic note, its leadership noting the recovery of Latin America and the Caribbean from the 1998-1999 economic slowdown.
The Bank president and many IDB governors also noted the need to accelerate efforts to invest more and in better ways to overcome social inequities and build new financial architecture to meet challenges of international financial volatilities.
"We have a good beginning to a new decade and a new century," IDB President Enrique V. Iglesias said at the closing ceremony of the one-week meeting in which the governors and thousands of other delegates and guests examined such issues a governance, poverty reduction, social and macroeconomic policy, climate change, youth, technology, cultural heritage, environmental protection, and small business development.
The Board of Governors is the highest authority of the Bank, representing ministers of finance, economy, or planning, or central bank presidents.
The Annual Meeting brought a record number of 5,300 IDB delegates to New Orleans, including official delegations, representatives of the private sector, journalists and guests.
Iglesias noted two persistent vulnerabilities of the region: the "social debt," meaning unsatisfactory levels of inequality, education, and poverty and the exposure to "international fluctuations." He pledged renewed efforts of the Bank to mobilize resources and instruments to overcome the persistent difficulties of the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, the first U.S. secretary of state ever to speak at an IDB Annual Meeting, gave a closing address stressing the need to improve democratic governance, social investments, and the bonds of the Inter-American community.
She said the IDB has played an "indispensable role in bring the American nations to the new century more united on agenda, approach and action than we have ever been."
Problems of crime, violence, corruption, and social inequality must be overcome, she warned, or the democracies in the region may "again be lured down the dead-end roads of protectionist policies and authoritarian rule."
During the meeting the Bank’s governors decided to explore financial resources and mechanisms, applying the principle of burden sharing, to carry out enhanced multilateral debt relief under the world initiative to assist heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC).
In other action, the Inter-American Investment Corporation, a member of the IDB Group that held its 15th Annual Meeting concurrently with the Annual Meeting of the IDB, concluded the subscription for a $500 million capital increase and accepted five new members: Belgium, Finland, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden.
Iglesias declared that the recession of 1998-1999 "is being overcome" and that "we will have in the year 2000 a more vital, energetic, renovated, growth rate."
Welcoming a "new climate," he noted a "vigorous return of capital" to the region.
He also welcomed Ecuador’s announcement during the Annual Meeting that it had achieved a stabilization agreement with the International Monetary Fund that is being supported by the IDB and other international institutions.
On the opening day of the Annual Meeting, the first Consultative Group meeting for the Peru-Ecuador peace process was held in New Orleans and resulted in adoption of a plan to mobilize $3 billion in financing to support development of a once-disputed border region between the two countries.
Iglesias said the themes of the Annual Meeting were concentrated on five areas: social sectors, including the fight against poverty, and, more specifically rural poverty; the need to take preventive action to better contend with natural disasters; adopting macroeconomic policies that also address social and human needs; youth development; and the advancement of women, as symbolized by a women’s leadership meeting during the Annual Meeting hosted by the Bank’s executive vice president.
On youth, Iglesias noted that 50 percent of the region’s population is less than 24 years old.
"Investing in youth is investing in development," he said.
He noted that Bank gave prominent attention to the issue of governance during the Annual Meeting and also stressed the importance of activities to promote and preserve cultural heritage, which he said is "not a luxury" but "instruments with economic dividends."
He said several Bank governors had noted the need to adopt new instruments to achieve greater effectiveness in Bank operations, as well as calls for greater regional cooperation to promote integration.
The United States assumed the chairmanship of the Board of Governors until the Bank’s next Annual Meeting, to be held in Santiago, Chile, in 2001.
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