Overview: The Inter-American Development Bank was established on 30 December 1959 and opened for business on 1 October 1960. The Bank is a special body of the American States Organization. Countries in other regions are allowed to be members of it, however, the non-Latin American countries cannot use the capital of the Bank but can take part in bidding the projects of the organization.

Aim: "Pooling together the joint forces of all member states to provide funds and technical aids to the plan for economic and social development of the Latin American countries", and assisting them to "make contributions either individually or collectively for speeding up the economic development and social progress".

Members: In 2001 the Bank had 46 members, which include 28 countries in America: Argentina, Barbados, the Bahamas, Paraguay, Panama, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Salvador, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala, Venezuela, Uruguay, Jamaica, Chile, Belize, Canada, the USA; the 16 countries in Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Britain, Croatia and Slovenia; and the two countries in Asia: Japan and Israel.

Leading Personnel: the present president is Enrique Iglesias, from Uruguay and assumed the post on 1 April 1988. He renewed his term of office for the third time on 1 April 1998 and his tenure will expire in 2003.

Headquarters: It is stationed in Washington and it has its branches in the member states of Latin America and in Paris and Tokyo.

Publications: Annual Report, published in English in the USA; Integration of Latin America, a monthly magazine published in Spanish in Argentina.

Website: http://www.iadb.org/


Organizational Structure: 1. The Council: the supreme organ of authority, which is composed of the council members, one from each member country with its meeting to be held once every year. The council members are usually the ministers of economy and finance, presidents of the central banks or others holding the similar posts of the member countries. 2. The Executive Board of Directors: a permanent body under the leadership of the council. It consists of 14 directors, of whom 9 are from the Latin American countries and the USA, Canada and Japan each having one director and the other two being from other countries to form the Board and their terms of office is three years. 3. President and Vice-president: led by the executive board of directors, they are in charge of the daily routine work. The executive board of directors elects President, with his terms of office being five years, and appoints Vice President. 4. Branches: its branch offices are set up in the capital cities of the member countries of Latin America and in Paris and London. 5. Bodies of Investment: the Inter-American Investment Corporation (Corporación Interamericana de Inversión) was set up in1989. It mainly serves those medium and small enterprises, which are not easy to get loans. The Multilateral Investment Fund (Fondo Multilateral de Inversión): it was established in 1993 and its main objective is to promote the development of private industries and to create a better environment for their investments. 6. The Institution for the Latin American Integration: Established in 1964, it is stationed in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. It is to foster and train high technical personnel, study important economic, judicial and social issues, and offer advice to its member countries.

Bank Capital Resources: 1. shared by all member countries; 2. provided by the members of the developed countries; 3. issuing bonds in the world capital market or other relevant countries. In 1960, the bank had a capital of US$ 813 million when it was opened to business. In 1970, it increased to US$ 3,150 million. On 30 June 1979 it owned a capital amounting to US$ 188.97 billion. In 1987, it had an increased capital of US$ 436.86 billion; and by the end of 1992 the capital increased to US$ 54.1 billion, of which the USA occupied 34.6 %, and Argentina and Brazil, each having a proportion of 11.6%. The right to vote is decided by the capital stock pooled in by each member country. The USA occupies 30% of votes, the Latin American countries a total of 50% (of which Argentina and Brazil each owns 11%), Canada 4%, other countries 16%. According to the regulations, the right to vote owned by the Latin American countries should under no circumstance go down below the present proportion. In 1994 the rectified capital shares of the Bank increased from US$ 61 billion to US$ 101 billion. By the end of 31 December1999 the general capital of the Bank totalled US$ 11.77billion with the liabilities being US$ 52.58 billion and the assets being US$ 64.35 billion.

Major Activities: to provide loans for promoting economic development in Latin America, help the member countries to develop trade, and offer technical cooperation to the preparations, arrangements and implementations of all kinds of development plans and projects so as to push ahead the economic integration in Latin America. The bank capital is divided into two types: one is general capital, which is expected to be used to provide loans for state or private owned enterprises in Latin America with its annual interest rate set at 8%, and the for a loan period lasts 10 - 25 years. The other is special business funds, which is mainly used for the projects aiming at developing economy in those underdeveloped Latin American countries with the annual loan interest set at 1 - 4 % for a period of 20 - 40 years. In addition, the bank has in its hands the "Latin American Development Funds" provided by the governments of the USA, Canada, Britain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela and Vatican. In the 1960's and 1970's, the Bank mainly provided funds for public projects of health and education. From 1990's it increased gradually investment in private industries. Over the past forty years the investment scale has been enlarged in a swift way. In 1961 the investment totalled US$ 294 million while it increased to US$ 10.063 billion in 1998. The investment in 2000 was US$ 5.266 billion. By the year of 2000 the Bank has granted the funds with a total amount of US$ 263 billion.

During the 28th annual meeting in 1987, the Executive Board of Directors was reelected. The USA intended to increase its capital shares in the Bank by 75% provided that it could possess the ultimate right of decision for the bank loans. However, the USA failed to attain its goal. In 1989 the 30th annual meeting came to the agreement on the increase of the bank capital and refused once again the request of the USA to possess the right to veto on bank loan issues.

In April 1994 the 35th annual meeting decided to carry out the eighth capital increase, namely to add a total sum of US$ 40 billion rectified capital shares. The member states in Latin America decided to transfer part of right to vote to Japan and some European members so as to gain more capital for the Bank. The USA, Canada and the Latin American countries gave up 4.6%, 0.37% and 3.87% of capital shares respectively. The USA still remained as the Bank's biggest shareholder. And other American countries owned 54% of votes. Japan's capital shares increased from 6% to 11%. The member countries also decided to allocate US$ 1 billion as a special business fund.


Relations between China and the Organization: Since 1991 the Chinese delegation has for eleven consecutive years attended the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank in the name of an observer. In March 2001, the Chinese delegation led by Li Ruogu, Assistant President of the People's Bank of China, attended the 42nd annual meeting as an observer.

In September 1993 the People's Bank of China submitted an official application for the membership of the Inter-American Development Bank. At present China has reached an agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank on establishing a cooperative fund worth of 2 million US dollars. But due to some difficulties in sharing out stocks, it is still necessary to do a lot of work before China joins the Inter-American Development Bank.

In February 1994, E. Iglesias, President of the Inter-American Development Bank visited China. In September 1995 Mrs. Bodesai, Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank led a delegation to attend the fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing.