By DANIEL DROSDOFF

Disbursements to the region also reached a record of $6.5 billion.

Quick response by the IDB and other multilateral banks this past year was instrumental in easing the effects of the Asian and Russian financial crises on Latin America, Bank President Enrique V. Iglesias told the IDB's Board of Executive Directors in his year-end report. He said the region was generally succeeding in managing the effects of those crises.

He also pointed to the substantial IDB assistance for countries suffering from the effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon and hurricanes Georges and Mitch. But despite the unusually large amount of emergency lending last year, for both financial crises and natural disasters, the IDB kept its lending focus on poverty reduction, Iglesias said.

Forty-six percent of the year's lending and 53 percent of the number of operations went for social programs, substantially exceeding the Bank's goal. In addition, lending for microenterprises totaled $215 million.

Other major IDB lending areas in 1998 included programs for state reform and improved public management, national and international peace processes, small and medium-sized business, regional integration, and gender and ethnic equity.

For the fifth year in a row the IDB remained the chief source of multilateral credit for Latin America and the Caribbean. Its financing for the smaller and least developed countries in 1998 totaled $2 billion, double the amount approved by any other single multilateral institution for these nations.

Programs for peace. Among the new operations the Bank approved in 1998 were a $57 million loan to Colombia to promote national peace and citizens' security and a $57 million loan to Uruguay for citizens' security and the prevention of violence and crime.

Operations for information technology included an $85 million loan to Barbados to modernize the education system and to give primary and secondary students the computer skills needed to compete in an information- and technology-based world economy.

The IDB chaired two new international consultative groups of donor nations in 1998: the Consultative Group for the Reconstruction and Transformation of Central America and the Consultative Group in Support of the Fight Against Drugs in Peru.

In a trendsetting operation, in which local groups played a large part in the planning phase, the Bank approved a $70.4 million loan to Panama to support a program for the sustainable development of the environmentally fragile Darién region.

The Bank increased its private sector loan and guarantee approvals to a record $566.2 million in 1998, compared with $320.3 million in 1997. It also approved a record total of $783 million in syndicated loans.

Private sector operations included loans for the world's first privatized postal system in Argentina and a fund designed to provide long-term subordinated debt financing for infrastructure projects.

The IDB-administered Multilateral Investment Fund increased its grants and investments by 130 percent in 1998, for a total of $142 million to support private sector development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Projects approved included eight investment funds that support small businesses and environmental protection, as well as a $12.9 million program to assist the recovery of Central American microenterprises that suffered heavy losses due to Hurricane Mitch.