"I am proud to be part of the IDB team," he said. "And I don’t play on losing teams." Photo by W. Heinz

Seated next to Brazilian soccer icon Pelé, IDB President Enrique V. Iglesias posed the question of why a multilateral lending institution such as the IDB should be participating in a seminar about sports.

"It is the job of the Bank to explore the potential of sports as an economic activity and a creator of jobs," said Iglesias. He added that participation in sports is a valuable preparation for a lifetime of good health and productive activities.

Speaker after speaker expanded on this theme in the seminar "Sport as a Means for Economic and Social Development, one of 16 seminars being held in this city conjunction with the 42^nd Annual Meeting of the Bank’s Board of Governors.

Pelé, former Brazilian minister of sports, urged participants to expand their vision of the role of sports and congratulated the Bank for its entry into this field. Pelé is now helping to advise the IDB in how the Bank can support the sport sector.

"I am proud to be part of the IDB team," he said. "And I don’t play on losing teams."

According to seminar speakers, the IDB could eventually play a major role in promoting both the economic and social benefits of sports. Drawing from its experience in other economic sectors, the Bank could work with its member countries to develop and harmonize the regulatory framework governing sports in the region, according to Paulo Paiva, the IDB’s vice president for planning and administration and organizer of the seminar. For example, countries could adopt legislation that would allow clubs and teams to become corporations with publicly traded shares.

As a vehicle for social improvement, the Bank could help finance the construction of stadiums, sport arenas, green areas and other community spaces, said Paiva.

"Investing in making sports available to youth in the region will pay off as they become productive members of society, bringing teamwork and winning attitudes to the workforce," said Paiva.

Steps towards including disabled persons

In a second seminar, the IDB today opened a dialogue among political and community leaders, representatives of the private sector and the media, and specialists on the need for policies that include disabled persons in economic and social life.

Nearly 10 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean suffers some form of disability, according to some estimates.

In the initiative titled "Dialogue on Development and Inclusion: Opportunities for People with Disabilities" the IDB is focusing on two main fronts: education and the labor market, and transportation infrastructure and urban design.

"Development programs in such areas as infrastructure, city planning, housing, transportation, information technology, and education and training offer key opportunities to address access for the disabled," noted Mayra Buvinic, chief of the IDB Social Development Division.

"Disability should be a public policy issue about mainstreaming this population in education and the labor market," said Buvinic. "It is important to note that the countries can gain major benefits by expanding opportunities for the disabled but incur high costs if they don’t."

The IDB intends to intensify the process of creating new opportunities through the utilization of financial and nonfinancial mechanisms, and the Bank will also encourage alliances between the private and public sectors.

The closing session of the seminar was presided over by Chile’s First Lady Luis Durán de Lagos; IDB President Iglesias; and Mario Kreutzberger, television host and director of the Organización Internacional de Instituciones Teletón .

President Iglesias and Kreutzberger signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation to jointly explore possibilities to promote the expansion and strengthening of those institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean that assist persons with disabilities.

The dialogue launched by the IDB and cosponsored by the governments of Canada and Finland supports efforts by the Bank and Latin America to promote social inclusion prior to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, to be held in South Africa in August 2001.

Strategies for competitiveness

In the second part of a two-day seminar closed today with a call to overcome a series of serious obstacles in the way of increasing Latin America’s competitiveness, among them a lack of financing, the complexity of its regulatory framework and tax systems, and inadequacies in its infrastructure.

"In the race for development, if this is the extent of our ability to compete, obviously we will be left behind," declared Eduardo Lora, acting IDB Chief Economist, in the seminar "Competitiveness: The Institutional Path."

The event, which took place in the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, brought together specialists from the IDB, ECLAC, the World Bank, and other international organizations, along with private sector representatives.

Today’s session examined institutional aspects of competitiveness from the perspective of macroeconomics, using data developed by the IDB and other international institutions.

At the seminar’s inaugural session yesterday, IDB President Iglesias said that while Latin America had carried out far-reaching reforms over the past decade that allowed it to recover economic stability and democratic governance, its countries still face major challenges.

"We must acknowledge the fact that Latin America’s links with the international markets are still based largely on commodity exports; about 70 percent of our exports are primary goods."

This fact implies that the region continues to depend on exports which are vulnerable to wide price fluctuations.

Iglesias said that the IDB would work with ECLAC and other international institutions to help Latin American and Caribbean countries develop strategies that will allow them to compete more effectively in world markets.

The Bank expects to launch a broad cooperation program that will offer technical assistance as well as support for national dialogues where competitiveness strategies are forged by all sectors of society.

Competitiveness will also be the focus of this year’s Report on Economic and Social Progress prepared by the Bank’s Research Department.

Call for deeper pension reforms

In another seminar, a panel of pension experts today urged a continuation and a deepening of pension reforms in Latin America as an essential ingredient of economic policy to achieve sustained growth and stability.

Carlos M. Jarque, manager of the Sustainable Development Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, said that the 10 countries in Latin America that have undertaken pension reform to different degrees are "now generating an important amount of resources through individual savings." These reforms not only assures a pension to employees and frees the state from a heavy fiscal load, but also provides resources for investment in economic development, he said.

But Jarque cautioned that the reforms undertaken so far are "only a beginning" and that systems must be strengthened, especially to enhance returns and to withstand international financial turbulence.

Chile’s undersecretary of social security, Adriana Hornkohl, said the model Chilean pension reform of 1981 has helped the country increase its savings and growth rate and achieve stability. But she added that more changes are needed to provide "greater transparency and information," lower transaction costs, greater foreign investments and better returns, and "an integrated social security system."

The seminar was organized by the IDB, the International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators, and the Association of Pension Fund Administrators of Chile.

Special events

Among other events today was a press conference to present a new book that takes to tasks the so-called Washington Consensus, the set of policies that in recent years has laid the foundation for many of the economic reforms in Latin America. According to the authors of Washington Contentious: Economic Policies for Social Equity in Latin America, however, these policies have improved living conditions for the general population.

The book, which was co-authored by Nancy Birdsall, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former IDB executive vice president, and Augusto de la Torre, former governor of Ecuador’s Central Bank, urges Latin American governments to redirect their economic policies toward an all-out battle against the region’s problems of inequity and social injustice.

In another ceremony today attended by Chilean Treasury Minister Nicolás Eyzaguirre, IDB President Enrique V. Iglesias, and Chilean Postal Chief Eduardo Moyano, Chile released a postage stamp commemorating the Bank’s Annual Meeting.