Inter-American Development Bank—IDB

Abstract

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was founded in 1959 to promote the individual and collective advancement of Latin American and Caribbean countries through the financing of economic and social development projects and the provision of technical assistance. All the powers of the Bank are vested in a Board of Governors, consisting of one Governor and one alternate appointed by each member country (usually ministers responsible for finance or presidents of central banks). The board of executive directors is responsible for the operations of the bank. It establishes the bank’s policies, approves loan and technical co-operation proposals that are submitted by the president of the bank, and authorizes the bank’s borrowings on capital markets. The bank issues sovereign-guaranteed investment loans that are used to finance economic and social development projects and sovereign-guaranteed policy-based loans that support agreed programmes focused on policy reform and on institutional change in specific sectors.