The Inter-American Development Bank today re-focused the way it will be looking at improving economic opportunities for the region's low income people. President of the Inter-American Development Bank Luis Alverto Moreno held a press briefing from Washington via video and teleconferencing to all member countries to launch the new funding initiative. Senior multi-sectoral specialist at IDB in Belize Marta Mejia explains what it means for Belize.
Marta Mejia, IDB
"What this initiative looks for is to find ways in the identified six areas that we were given which are citizen identification, financial democracy, employment generation and entrepreneurship, basic infrastructure services, information in communication, and housing which are six areas that have been identified by the bank that the bank would like to focus a lot of its efforts but always looking at that majority that is at the base. How is it that we can provide those people with the instruments that they need so that they can be skilled and they can work and they can have decent jobs. The other thing that is important that the president also mentioned is that this cannot be done only by governments. We basically need all of society to participate and therefore he spoke of the private sector and he spoke to non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations. Everybody has a role and everybody needs to play a role. You can't just depend on government to be doing everything.
For many years we've been doing a lot of programs, a lot of education projects, and things like that and what has happened is that people are not any better off. If anything, a lot of people are poorer than before and the inequality has gotten bigger. So if you help at the macro level, let's say on a big government project, it doesn't necessarily mean that the benefits are going to trickle down. Therefore the majority who are the bottom don't always get the benefits, not everybody gets the benefits for which programs were intended and therefore that is why a lot of this targeted to work with everybody just governments."
The new funding initiative is expected to benefit Central American and Caribbean nations members to the IDB.
