A NEW PROGRAM WILL BENEFIT INDIVIDUALS, BUSINESS, IN PARTICULAR SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES, WITH DIGITALIZATION AND ADOPTION OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

The Inter-American Development Bank approved a US$ 300 million loan to improve the productivity of Argentina’s economy through its digitalization. The program will establish a Digital Agenda, strengthen the connectivity’s legal framework, expand the offer and boost the quality of digital government services, and promote regulatory measures for the digital productive transformation.

This is the first of two consecutive operations from a single disbursement, both financed separately even though they are technically linked to each other.

The Program for Strengthening of the Digital Agenda: Connectivity, Electronic Government and Digital Productive Transformation will benefit individuals and business, in particular small and medium-size companies, through a substantial improvement in productivity by digitalizing them and adopting digital technologies.

The measures aim to strengthen the strategy of digitalizing the public and private sectors, while the program supports a comprehensive approach of intervention in diverse sectors aligned with Argentina’s Digital Agenda.

Among its components are actions to ensure the maintenance of a macroeconomic context that is congruent with the objectives of the program and the development of the Digital Agenda as an instrument of coordination of public policies.

A third component is a strategic regulation for digital connectivity, which includes the strengthening of the legal framework for Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the improvement of regulation of competition in the ICT market and the infrastructure’s development for digital inclusion.

In the same way, the fourth component is the development of e-government, including the strengthening in the security of critical infrastructures of personal data and good practices in the use of ICTs, the development of digitalization and interoperability in the public sector, the display of tools to enable secure internet transactions between citizens and government, as well as the promotion of the use of new technologies for the provision of public services.

The fifth component consists of digital productive transformation, which includes actions for the digital transformation of companies; digital innovation; digital transformation in vertical sectors such as knowledge-based services, the construction and finance sectors; and the promotion of talent.

The US$ 300 million IDB loan has a 20-year repayment term, a 5.5 year grace period, and an interest rate based on Libor.