Financing Development

What is the role of development banks? What are the vested interests behind the negotiations between governments and multilateral banks to approve loans? Do development banks impose their worldviews? Does the political orientation of governments play a role? Christian Asinelli examines three multilateral institutions (IDB, World Bank and CAF, the Development Bank of Latin America) in ten Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela), the political orientation of the government (pro-State/pro-market) and the typology of the loan (investment or adjustment) in order to understand the behaviour of banks and governments when implementing projects with international financing. In order to explain the fluctuations, successes and failures of this relationship, the author draws on his first-hand knowledge of the object of study, as an official of the Argentine State and international organisations, as well as his academic training in the field of political science; in fact, the basis of the analysis presented here comes from the research for his doctoral thesis. The author also adds the perspectives of Enrique Garcia, former Executive President of CAF; Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB); and Carlos H. Acuna, an academic in the field of political science and senior researcher at CONICET. This is a highly topical issue, which the crisis caused by the pandemic has brought back to the centre of academic and political debate as a problem for research and as a focus for action, and which offers us a historic opportunity to rethink the role and strategy of international financing, in order to place it at the service of the development of all the countries of the region.