Argentina will improve the performance of services in metropolitan areas outside of the capital with the goal of enhancing quality of life and increasing the competitiveness of urban economies with a $40 million loan approved by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Argentina's government hopes to design and implement innovative approaches to managing projects and delivering services in cases where efficient performance requires cooperation between two or more jurisdictions.
The program will also support institutional strengthening and the design and implementation of multi-jurisdictional management models. It will also finance investments in infrastructure, equipment and goods necessary for the implementation of these models.
The project will have three components:
- A support for metropolitan area governance component will include the creation of discussion forums for identifying and analyzing metropolitan problems.
- A metropolitan area management component will have two major subcomponents: strengthening of metropolitan areas outside the capital to support the processes of institutional development and capacity building at the provincial and municipal levels; and investments that will finance concrete actions in three to six metropolitan areas of the region.
- An administration and management component will finance consulting services and equipment purchases for supervision, auditing, monitoring, communication and dissemination, management and administration of the program.
The IDB loan is for a 25-year term, with a five-year grace period, at a Libor-based interest rate. Local counterpart funds total $10 million.