Latin America Works Together with CAF for Economic and Social Recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the health of more than 2 million Latin Americans, threatens the sustainability of the social progress made in recent decades, and will usher in the largest economic recession of recent times. Since the first cases emerged in the region, CAF—development bank of Latin America—has offered comprehensive support with non-reimbursable funds and credit lines to bolster health care and countercyclical policies, as tools for real-time monitoring, knowledge generation and training.

In its first online meeting in 50 years, CAF’s Board of Directors—made up of ministers of Economy and Finance, presidents of Central Banks and senior economic authorities of shareholder countries—demonstrated once again its commitment to regional integration and economic upturn with the approval of operations for USD 576 million in Argentina, Barbados y Brazil, for a total of USD 4.9 billion in 54 operations in the first half of this year, which is expected to close with record approvals of more than USD 16 billion.

”The commitment of member countries has allowed us to give a fast and timely response to meet the needs of the people. Given the magnitude of the social and economic crisis we are facing, new funding sources are required. That is why we are working on the creation of a fund to finance integration and digital infrastructure in the region that would be set up with the support of developed countries, which would offer guarantees for bond issuance, offering Latin American countries a source of financing at the same long-term cost that they access, in an effort to address conclusively the infrastructure challenge,” said CAF executive president Luis Carranza Ugarte.

With financing to SMEs through microfinance institutions, local development banks and commercial banks, CAF channels its aid to the private sector to stimulate private sector revival and protect jobs in Latin America. In addition to financial action, non-financial support activities are carried out with internationalization, business innovation and integration projects targeting production chains and clusters.

CAF has also offered real-time monitoring, virtual training and knowledge generation to countries as comprehensive support to governments in the design and implementation of their economic and social recovery strategies. CAF’s human talent, together with experts in strategic sectors such as healthcare, education, economy, transportation, social protection, technology and governance, are working on the design of public policies tailored to each country, which are available here.