- EIB Vice-President underlines EU bank’s important role in fostering sustainable investment around the globe
- ALIDE’s Secretary General highlights cooperation ties and their potential to promote investment projects focusing on climate action
- Development banks are the institutions that contribute most to mobilising resources for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean
Today in Luxembourg, the European Investment Bank (EIB) is hosting the Asociación Latinoamericana de Instituciones Financieras para el Desarrollo (ALIDE), the international organisation representing development banking in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over two days, today and tomorrow, representatives of ALIDE’s member banks will take part in a variety of workshops and meetings organised by the EIB at its headquarters with the aim of strengthening the EU bank’s relations with Latin America’s development banks and mobilising funds to promote sustainable growth with an environmental focus.
In her speech opening the event, EIB Vice-President Emma Navarro stressed “the EIB’s key role in fostering sustainable investment. The EU bank is already the world’s biggest financer of climate action projects around the globe. This is also one of our priorities in Latin America: providing the necessary resources to build environmentally responsible infrastructure that has a positive social impact, improves people’s lives and helps to create wealth. Our alliance with development banks working in the region is therefore key (…) By joining forces, our impact is greater and we go further”.
ALIDE’s Secretary General, Edgardo Alvarez, added that “the premise underlying our action is twin-track cooperation. Our cooperation as an organisation representing development banking matches the objectives of EIB support for our region, bringing banks closer to the sources enabling the financing of projects and investments with a strong focus on climate action (…) In this way, we are meeting our goal of supporting the mobilisation of resources and technical assistance for the financing of development in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
For her part, the director for EIB operations in Latin America, María-Shaw Barragán, emphasised that “the European Union is Latin America’s foremost development partner. The EIB, as the EU bank, provides funding for economic development, the creation of social and environmental infrastructure, private sector development and climate action. Since we began working in the region 25 years ago, the EIB has made available around EUR 8 billion in support of over 100 projects”.
The programme of ALIDE’s visit to the EIB’s headquarters in Luxembourg includes various workshops examining the EU bank’s financing of environmental and renewable energy projects, cooperation with development banks, the methods of evaluating and measuring the impact of its activities, and the EIB’s economic resilience initiative aimed at providing funds to tackle the causes of the migration crisis.
The EIB in Latin America and the Caribbean
The EIB has been providing finance in Latin America since 1993 under mandates granted by the EU Council and the European Parliament. On 1 July 2014 the current External Lending Mandate, covering the period 2014-2020, entered into force, providing for a ceiling of almost EUR 2.3 billion for operations in Latin America.
The EU bank has funded the development of over 100 projects in 14 different countries in the region, with total investment of around EUR 8 billion. The EIB is currently working towards stepping up its activity in Latin America with the aim of reaching a financing volume of EUR 1 billion a year. It signed its first loan in the Caribbean in 1978 and since then has provided total financing of over EUR 1.8 billion.
For their part, the development banks are the institutions that contribute most to mobilising resources for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean, accounting for around 48% of total financing. Loans target climate change mitigation, renewable energy generation and transport.
