Year: 2022

Winner: Inter-American Development Bank

Unprecedented response to support the hardest hit

Latin America and the Caribbean was among the regions worst hit by the pandemic: local
economies collapsed as governments imposed strict lockdowns.

A once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis had to be met with unprecedented financial support, and
some of that came from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which approved a record
of $23.4 billion in financing to the region last year to help support the recovery.

The IDB wins the LatinFinance award for Multilateral Development Bank of the Year thanks
to its response to the financial crisis and despite the shockwaves of a scandal that led to the
ousting in September of its then president, Mauricio Claver-Carone.

The lender approved 103 loans for a total of $14.5 billion in 2021, while disbursements
reached $12.5 billion in 2021. “We feel we rose to the challenge and helped the region in
difficult times,” the bank said in response to questions.

The IDB also approved $2.3 billion to strengthen regional supply chains, nearly twice the
average of the three years preceding the pandemic.

The lending splurge bolstered the bank’s financial results. Net profit rose 30% to $856 million
in the first half of this year compared to the same period of 2021. Its return on equity ratio was
1.8% and return on asset ratio was 0.4%.

IDB Invest, the bank’s private sector financing arm, also broke new ground with, among other
things, the sale of the region’s first blue bond, for AUD50 million ($37 million), in November
2021, to finance water and sanitation projects. It issued a second blue bond for AUD38 million
in October.

The IDB, for its part, issued Spain’s first block-chain-based bond listed on a regulated market.
“This milestone opens the door for similar bond issues in Spain and Latin America and the
Caribbean where access to alternative project finance is more limited,” the bank says.
The bank placed $9.3 billion in bonds in the first six months of the year and expects issuance
to continue at a similar pace to total approximately $20 billion in 2022.