The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a $45 million loan to help speed up Uruguay’s post pandemic economic recovery by fostering business innovation and productivity.
The loan is the last in a series of three under a $100 million conditional credit line approved in 2017 to provide technical and financial support to the country’s National Research and Innovation Agency.
The latest operation – which, like its predecessors, uses a results-based model – will support steps to strengthen four areas: research, human capital, business innovation, and innovative entrepreneurship.
It will finance some 155 sectoral and applied research projects to meet the needs of productive and government sectors, while at the same time promoting an improved gender balance in the composition of research teams.
In terms of human capital, the operation will finance nearly one thousand postgraduate grants (both at home and abroad), postdoctoral grants, and human talent circulation (researchers and technologists mobility) grants. Priority will be given to women for postgraduate grants in engineering and technology, mathematics, computer and information sciences, and physical sciences.
It will also support some 300 business innovation projects, open innovation projects, and innovation articulation initiatives, such as those aimed at improving coordination between academia and the business sector and projects supporting patenting abroad.
Lastly, the operation will finance the creation and development of innovative triple-impact ventures, with a special focus on women entrepreneurs, and the design of an acceleration instrument for ventures. Approximately 100 entrepreneurs or new ventures will be able to benefit from this component.
Each one of these credit lines has specific goals for climate-change related projects, with an estimated 15.58% of the credit’s resources expected to support mitigation and adaptation activities.
The $45 million IDB loan is for a 24.5-year term, with a 6-year period of grace, and interest based on SOFR.
About the IDB
The Inter-American Development Bank is devoted to improving lives. Established in 1959, the IDB is a leading source of long-term financing for economic, social, and institutional development in Latin America and the Caribbean. The IDB also conducts cutting-edge research and provides policy advice, technical assistance, and training to public and private sector clients throughout the region.
Lobera,Jose Luis
Goettsch,Marieke