Highlights: support for the World Cup cities, environmental conservation, and infrastructure
Brazil is one of the IDB’s founding member countries. Since 1961, the Bank has approved $40 billion in loans and guarantees for Brazil that have helped fund projects costing more than $110 billion. These projects, in the areas of infrastructure, environment, institutional strengthening, and poverty reduction, have been carried out in close cooperation with all levels of government, civil society, and the private sector.
For example, the Federal Highway Rehabilitation Program supported improvements for 10,000 km of highways in 18 Brazilian states that carry more than 60 percent of the country’s freight. PROFAE, a program to improve nursing, has provided training to 225,000 field workers and 90 auxiliaries, in this way benefitting all of the Brazilian population.
In 2011, the Bank’s current portfolio of projects in Brazil totaled nearly $9 billion. Approximately one third of this portfolio is targeted at improving living conditions in cities, the result of a strategy initiated at the end of the last decade. Thanks to these investments, the Bank is known in Brazil as the "Bank of Cities. "Bank projects are benefiting thousands of families that live in vulnerable areas, particularly in major state capitals and other cities that will host the 2014 World Cup.
IDB-funded urban projects include support for investments in transportation, sanitation, environment, neighborhood improvement, institutional strengthening, and renovation of historic centers. Additional activities promote local economic development and improve the business climate to attract investment.
The Bank is a principal partner in the government's PROCIDADES credit program, which is designed to take a comprehensive approach to addressing urban problems. In this initiative, the Bank is working directly with municipalities, which are provided with access to lines of credit.
Environmental and infrastructure projects and integration
Nearly a quarter of the Bank’s portfolio in Brazil is directed at environmental programs and basic infrastructure and regional integration, including investments in restoring degraded areas, tourism, promotion, and construction and rehabilitation of roads and airports.
The Serra do Mar and Atlantic Forest Socio-environmental Recovery Program is an example of how the Bank integrates environmentalprotection with community development and poverty reduction. In addition, initiatives such as the Acre Sustainable Development Program show how deforestation in the Amazon can be reduced when local people carry out sustainable forest management and adopt alternative sustainable economic activities.
A major focus for IDB investment in infrastructure in Brazil is road construction and rehabilitation, an area that accounts for more than $550 million of investments in projects in 2010-2011. In the tourism sector, the IDB has supported successivestages of the National Tourism Development Program (PRODETUR) since its inception in 1994.
Fighting Poverty
Another principal focus of IDB lending in Brazil is combating poverty, promoting equity, and improving human capital; these areas currently account for 16 percent of the Bank's portfolio.
After helping to consolidate and expand the Bolsa Familia program in the middle of the last decade, the IDB is currently carrying out an initiative to better integrate the federal government’s poverty reduction activities.
The Bank has been supporting the Program to Support the Development of Children and Adolescents in Ceará (Proares), which is benefiting 82,000 at-risk children and adolescents in the state through investments in education, health, culture, sports, and social assistance.
The remainder of the Bank's portfolio includes private sector projects and strengthening of public sector institutions. For the private sector, since 1997 the Bank has partnered with BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, in eight operations totaling $9.5 billion to strengthen the competitiveness of micro, small and medium-size enterprises.
The Bank also plays an important role in financing non-sovereign guarantee operations through operations to support projects with strategic developmental importance, such as new wind turbine production lines and expansion of the Sao Paulo metro.
In recent years, the Bank has supported a broad range of projects related to modernization of the state, including measures to strengthen planning and fiscal management through the programs PNAFE, PNAF-M, PNAGE, PROMOEX and PROFISCO.
These complementary initiatives are inter-related through a sequential process of execution that demonstrates how public agencies can be modernized.Results of these programs include increases in revenues, better cost control, improvement of taxpayer services (government service centers and Internet websites) and greater transparency and public participation.