IMF and IDB Agree On New Initiatives For Region

• The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said they have agreed to enhance their collaboration to better support the efforts of members in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to foster sustainable and inclusive growth and address the structural challenges of climate change.
• The agencies said that by operating within the scope of each institution's mandate, the IDB and IMF staff will increase their cooperation in two main areas - general coordination and climate finance.
• The two Washington-based financial institutions said that as part of their enhanced general coordination, the IDB and the IMF staff will deepen their cooperation on four topics, namely: surveillance of macro-economic policies; IMF arrangements, in particular, the Resilience and Sustainability Fund (RSF); IDB lending operations, including investment and policy-based loans; and capacity development.  
• The climate finance collaboration will focus on identifying policies to support member countries' climate objectives in the context of the RSF, capacity development to support the implementation of the RSF and building programmatic approaches to mobilise climate finance.
• By strengthening their collaboration in these areas, the IDB and the IMF are seeking to enhance their support for designing economic policies and policy reform programmes in common member countries, as well as mobilise climate finance more effectively. This includes working with country platforms to attract additional funding for climate action.
• In this context, climate finance roundtables recently convened in Barbados, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, brought together authorities, development partners, and private investors. These initiatives helped to explore solutions to the countries' climate finance needs and provided faster and broader access to financing and capacity development.

(Source: Trinidad Express Newspapers)