Comment Integration and Trade
What we do?
The Inter-American Development Bank performs research, provides policy advice and technical assistance, and carries out financial operations through grants and loans with the objective of strengthening the capacity of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the areas of trade and integration. INT is located in the Bank’s Vice-Presidency of Sectors and Knowledge.
INT’s operations help countries to benefit from an open trade and investment regime and pursue proactive regional and global economic integration agendas. These operations provide support for negotiating and implementing trade and investment agreements, promoting exports and attracting investment, strengthening trade facilitation practices and customs modernization, building productive capacity for regional and global integration, ensuring appropriate adjustment measures to advance the process of economic integration, and deepening regional integration and cooperation through the provision of Regional Public Goods, including migration and financial integration.
Research
- Generating state-of-the-art research and knowledge relevant to policymaking.
- Translating policy research into effective projects and operations.
- Evaluating results and impacts of relevant projects and disseminating best practices.
- Developing specialized databases and modeling services for assessing the impact of trade and integration.
Operations
Provide financing through loans and non-reimbursable technical cooperation in areas such as:
- Export promotion and investment attraction.
- Customs modernization and trade facilitation.
- Negotiation and implementation of trade and investment agreements.
- Regional public goods.
- Trade adjustment and poverty reduction.
- Financial and labor integration.
Initiatives
- Coordinating the Regional Public Goods program, which finances projects in the LAC region aimed at furthering the provision of cross-border regional public goods; coordinating the Regional Policy Dialogue on trade and integration; coordinating the Japan Scholarship Program.
- Supporting trade and integration initiatives to strengthen LAC subregional, regional, hemispheric (Americas), extraregional (Europe and Asia), and global integration. Supporting regional infrastructure initiatives such as the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), and the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project.
- Supporting the implementation of the Aid for Trade initiative in LAC in partnership with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
- Collaborating with international organizations such as WTO, OECD, the World Customs Organization, the World Bank, the United Nations, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Commission.
- Organizing high-level seminars and technical workshops in which policymakers and representatives from the private sector and civil society explore trade and integration policy options.
- Coordinating initiatives with the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL) of the IDB’s Vice Presidency for Countries. These include the Bank’s Trade and Integration Capacity Building programs, Trade and Integration Policy Research networks (LAEBA, ELSNIT, RedINT) and key publications and databases (DATA-INTAL; INTAL Newsletter; Integration and Trade Journal).
