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Upon closing the meeting held in Miami, Moreno announced that next year the IDB’s 50th Annual Meeting will take place in Medellín, Colombia. While the Bank and the host government go ahead with official arrangements, social organizations are already getting prepared for the meeting.

At the 49th Annual Meeting of the IDB Board of Governors held in Miami, Medellín Mayor, Alonso Salazar, and Colombian Finance Minister, Oscar Iván Zuluaga, gave a press conference, with the presence of the also Colombian IDB President, Luis Alberto Moreno. For Colombian representatives, “the next IDB meeting is going to be unforgettable and will be fundamental to show the world the progress registered in that city and the whole country”.

According to Mayor Salazar, the event will bring about “incalculable” economic effects, not only through an increase in tourism but also in investment. Although no specific data were provided, Salazar mentioned that a “major investment” from Canadian companies has already been registered in mining, and also in reforestation with resources from Chilean companies and the interest of Venezuelan ones.

Moreno, on the other hand, referred to the issues that will be addressed and pointed out that “it will be a look at what has taken place at the IDB and the region in the last 50 years, and what there is to come in the next 50 years”.

For social organizations, the IDB anniversary also supposes a necessary evaluation of institutional activities and the Bank engagement with civil society, both at national and regional level.

According to Margarita Florez of ILSA, in these 50 years the Bank went through different stages. At a first stage, the IDB supported the import-substitution model and industrial base growth; at a second stage, as of the end-1980s, Bank resources came along with structural adjustment policies, policies for the privatization of public services and the implementation of social policies. At the same time, the IDB opened itself to the scrutiny of civil society, adopting a participation policy and involving environmental criteria in its project cycle. Finally, under Moreno’s administration, a realignment of the institution was undertaken, whose first steps are currently underway. The first considerations regarding its results have been contradictory, even within the Bank itself.

Throughout these years, civil society organizations have participated in at least two ways. On the one hand, as receivers of technical cooperation or as project executors, by means of the Civil Society Advisory Councils (CASC), promoted by the institution; and on the other hand, by means of the activity of some organizations that, based on the right to participate in acts they consider as having social and environmental impacts, have worked at national and regional level, aiming at submitting IDB projects, programs and policies to social audits in the different countries and of those that support regional integration plans.

With a view to the next meeting, social organizations will be joining efforts so as to ensure a strong evaluation of IDB impacts on the region, as well as an analysis of the consequences of the realignment process currently underway.

Source: Univisión - ILSA

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