Comment on this page About UsOur Mission Since its inception in 1993, the Multilateral Investment Fund's (MIF) guiding principle has been clear: to promote broad-based economic growth through private sector development, particularly microenterprises and small businesses. With its resource replenishment taking effect in March 2007, MIF II is moving forward with a renewed focus on poverty reduction. Using both grants and investments, MIF actively seeks partners to help test, and then demonstrate, the effectiveness of innovative ideas. MIF’s projects are intended to become self-sustaining and potentially to reach a scale capable of changing the lives of millions of people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. MIF is the leading source of technical assistance grants for micro and small business development in Latin America and the Caribbean. MIF has approved more than 1000 projects, primarily grants, with over 800 civil society, private sector, and government partners, creating a community of change agents to both stimulate private sector innovation and share lessons learned. Together, these efforts are putting US$2.2 billion to work in all twenty-six developing countries of the IDB. But, MIF cannot do everything, nor should it try. MIF has focused its activities in areas where it can make a difference and accelerate change, including improving the business framework, or the environment in which the private sector develops; enhancing enterprise development, or building capacity to help both workers and smaller businesses thrive; and promoting financial democracy, or greater access to the financial system. In recent years, MIF has also decentralized its operations, increasingly using IDB country offices to identify, process and implement small projects, or “mini-grants” (US$ 150,000 or less). This program is enabling MIF to reach many more potential clients through smaller programs, particularly in rural areas. MIF II March 2007 marked an important event in MIF's lifeline: the advent of MIF II. Thanks to this replenishment of resources, MIF will be able to finance innovative projects through 2015, with a renewed focus on poverty reduction through private sector development, in line with the IDB Group's ongoing Opportunities for the Majority initiative. Fourteen years of developing and testing innovative financing and delivery mechanisms through a network of partnerships has given MIF a good idea of what works and what does not. This experience, coupled with updated charter revisions, provides MIF II with an improved platform for attacking poverty through opportunity. To see the Agreement Establishing MIF II from 2005 and for more background information on the replenishment process, please click here.>> History The wave of economic reforms marking the transition to a global market economy in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s was swift, a situation calling for an equally dynamic institutional response. MIF was born into this context, created in 1993 as a financial tool to help countries adapt to these changes, using both grants and investments to fund innovative development projects in areas such as microfinance, testing new ideas and laying the groundwork for future reform. Please see the Agreement Establishing the Multilateral Investment Fund from 1992 for more information. The United States and Japan assumed leading roles in MIF, each contributing $500 million. Total MIF membership now stands at 38 countries from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and Europe, as well as Japan and South Korea. Throughout its lifespan, MIF has adapted to the evolving needs of the region, playing a leading role in the development of microfinance and strengthening the business environment. MIF has also formed partnerships with a growing network of over 800 private sector institutions, research centers, NGOs and public sector entities along the way, helping to create a community of innovation and knowledge. MIF will continue to finance innovative projects and aim for far reaching demonstration effects thanks to the initiation of MIF II, which took effect in March 2007. For more background information on the MIF II replenishment process, please click here.>> Strategies and Priorities Creating a learning community—made up of partners, executing agencies and other actors in the development process—to promote the exchange of experiences and knowledge is at the core of MIF work. In its most basic form, MIF's strategy is to fund innovative pilot projects, building upon those that demonstrate promising results and have the potential of being replicated on a larger scale. Project Clusters, or groups of related projects that are developed, implemented and evaluated together, are formed to generate knowledge on specific topics. Another MIF strategy centers on donor approved Lines of Activity, which act as umbrella programs under which a series of related small projects can be approved with shortened procedures. MIF activities are centered on three broad categories: MIF looks for projects exhibiting the following characteristics:
Members of the Donors Committee MIF currently has 38 donating member countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Europe and Asia. These members form the Donors Committee, which is responsible for governing MIF and approving all projects, with voting share based on contribution level: Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. Haiti, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom joined the ranks of MIF donors with the initiation of MIF II in March 2007. China is the newest member, joining in January 2009.
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