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foe
brazil campaigner Elisangela Paim
reports from the annual meeting of the
inter-american development bank
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The
Inter-American
Development Bank
is the principal
source of multilateral financing for
economic, social and institutional
development projects in Latin America and the
Caribbean .
This year its annual meeting is took place
in Lima between March 29th to 31st.
Calendar of events
around IDB 2004 annual
meeting.
background
information about idb
commitments and contradictions
Lima March 27 2004
We started Saturday with a meeting of NGOs
during which we selected speakers for the
meetings with the
executive directors
of the IDB to discuss
the environmental and indigenous peoples
policies, Camisea and water privatisation.
Four meetings with representatives of the
Dominican Republic, Canada and the US have
already been confirmed, while we are waiting
to confirm meetings with
Paraguay/Bolivia/Uruguay and Norway .
We also discussed, although quickly, a
letter to the Board of the IDB. The draft
letter discusses the IDB's lack of policies
and environmental safeguards. The current
Bank policy dates back to 1979, and is the
least rigorous of all the international
financial institutions. The letter was the
fruit of a group process and is really very
good.
Representatives from FoEI met with Ricardo
Santiago, director of the IDB's regional
operations in Southern South America. We
discussed the regional integration scheme for
South America, the
Pantanal Program
, Prodetur Sur a program
financed by the IDB to develop tourism in the
South of Brazil, and the
Parana-Paraguay waterway
.
It was a good meeting, partly because of the
commitment by Ricardo Santiago to communicate
to other officials that the IDB has a
responsibility to follow up with civil
society. That will provide us with a chance
to discuss this initiative for physical
integration in South America, and present
alternatives. The IDB committed to update the
web pages on regional integration scheme for
South America with information on the various
axes, and the projects that could be
financed. But we remain concerned about the
banks' conduct in relation to the
initiative.
In one of the seminars, the integration
initiative was presented in a contradictory
way in presentations by the banks (IDB,
Andean Development Corporation
,and the
brazilian development bank
) compared
with the presentations of IDB representatives
in earlier meetings with NGOs. The IDB stated
that regional integration scheme for South
America is only a plan, and that no related
projects are in execution yet. At the same
time, the Andean Development Corporation
bank, which is one of the promotors of
regional integration scheme for South
America, commented that about 300 project
proposals are being studied and that some are
already under construction.
read the diary from:
monday march
29
friday march
26
thursday march
25
Read more about the Inter-american
Development Bank:
CENSAT Agua Viva- FoE Colombia:
www.censat.org
(in
spanish)
Rios Vivos Coalition:
www.riosvivos.org.br
(english,
spanish and portuguese)
Bank Information Center, United States:
www.bicusa.org
ACERCA on Plan Puebla Panama:
www.asej.org
IDB website:
www.iadb.org
(english and
spanish)
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