EIB hosted ALIDE in meeting to strengthen cooperation with financial institutions of Latin America and Caribbean

On July 4 in Luxembourg, the European Investment Bank (EIB) hosted 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, 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. 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.

Original source: EIB
Published on 4 July 2018