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Luis Alberto Moreno elected president of Inter-American Development Bank

Colombian diplomat and former minister of economic development Luis Alberto Moreno was elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank during a special meeting of the Bank’s Board of Governors at IDB headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Amb. Moreno will take office on October 1, 2005 for a five-year term. He will succeed Enrique V. Iglesias, who resigned his post on May 31. The president oversees operations of the IDB Group, which is made up of the Bank and its affiliates, the Inter-American Investment Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Fund.

The oldest and largest regional development bank in the world, the IDB is the primary source of multilateral funding in Latin America and the Caribbean. It was founded in 1959 to promote economic and social development in the region.

The Bank’s central mandate is to reduce poverty, enhance social equity and promote environmentally sustainable economic growth. Its priority areas of activity are social programs, competitiveness, modernization of the state and regional integration.

In order to be elected president, a candidate must receive votes from IDB member countries representing a majority of total voting power, as well as an absolute majority of the governors of the 28 regional members (the 26 borrowing member countries, plus Canada and the United States). The IDB has a total of 47 member countries. It has country offices in all the borrowing countries, as well as offices in Europe and in Japan.

The Board of Governors is the highest authority of the Bank, made up of one representative for each of the member countries, generally ministers of finance, presidents of central banks or other high-ranking officials. The Board of Governors holds annual meetings to review Bank operations and make key policy decisions. It also holds special meetings under certain circumstances, such as the election of a president.

Mr. Moreno will be the fourth president of the IDB. His predecessors were Felipe Herrera of Chile (1960-1971); Antonio Ortiz Mena of Mexico (1971-1987); and Enrique V. Iglesias, of Uruguay, who has been president since 1988, having been reelected three times (1993, 1998 and 2003).

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