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March - April 2000
ROUND-UP



IDB meeting features technology
Information technology was among the subjects explored in a series of seminars held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the IDB’s Board of Governors at the end of March in New Orleans.

The meeting, the principal forum for analyzing economic and social development issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, drew some 4,500 participants, among them government officials, business executives, bankers, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and international agencies, and journalists.

See the next issue of IDBAmérica for a full report.

Needed: Data on race
Calling race and ethnicity "absolutely defining factors in poverty in Latin America," Inter-American Dialogue President Peter Hakim called on multilateral development banks to tackle this issue head on. "The MDBs say there is no good data on ethnic and racial causes of poverty," said Hakim at a Black History Month roundtable at the IDB in February. "It’s the job of the mdbs to get the data."

Support for Ecuador
The IDB and other multilateral financial institutions have pledged to come to the aid of Ecuador with a package of $2 billion to support that country’s economic and structural reform program. The funds, which will be made available over the next three years, include $620 million from the IDB, $300 million from the International Monetary Fund, $425 million from the World Bank Group, and $700 million from the Andean Development Corporation. If approved by the executive boards of the institutions, $900 million will be made available in the next 12 months to help the country implement dollarization, resolve its banking crisis and strengthen public finances, including measures to minimize the impact of the present economic difficulties on the poor.



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