The Inter-American Development Bank approved today a $1 billion, three-year guarantee pilot program. This amount could be leveraged up to $4 billion, or four times the size of the pilot program.
Under the guarantee pilot program, borrowing countries using regular Bank lending programs will be able to choose between receiving regular disbursements and receiving an equivalent amount to be used as a credit guarantee. The pilot guarantee program will apply to countries that have solid macroeconomic programs in place but nonetheless have difficulty in accessing private capital markets. A single country could receive a maximum of $250 million in guarantees, which it could use as leverage to issue bonds in the international markets of up to $1 billion.
The purpose of the program is to attract the private sector to support development initiatives in Latin American and the Caribbean. The expectation is that − under the umbrella of the Inter-American Bank − the guarantee option would attract additional private funds that otherwise would not have been available for term financing in the country.