2 weeks ago
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The Inter-American Development Bank says it has launched organisational changes to increase the impact and scale of its development work throughout the Latin American and the Caribbean region.
“We’re doing this to increase the impact and scale of our work. Countries face major challenges and we’re rising to the occasion to help them meet those challenges. The approval of these changes isn’t just good news for the IDB, it’s good news for the region, because we’ll be better able to lift people out of poverty, create jobs and tackle climate change,” IDB President Ilan Goldfajn said on Monday.
“We will start implementing some of these changes immediately,” he added.
The current IDB’s organisational structure was created 17 years ago while IDB Invest’s organisational structure was created eight years ago. The IDB said the world has changed since then, and the financial institution must change with it.
The organisational changes are part of IDB’s implementation of three transformational changes (IDBImpact+) approved by the Boards of Governors. It includes IDBStrategy+, the new institutional strategy, that focuses on three core areas: reducing poverty and inequality, promoting growth, and addressing climate change.
The IDB said meeting the goals laid out in IDBImpact+ requires realigning the institution to deliver greater impact and scale. The organisational changes place emphasis on key priorities.
IDB said because the IDB’s employees are its most valuable asset and play a critical role in helping countries meet their development goals, it is creating a new vice presidency for human resources and digital transformation.
“This is important to ensure the institution is able to recognise the impactful work of our staff and to foster a collaborative and meritocratic environment,” the IDB said, adding that technology is key to evolution and that the new VP will also ensure the bank is using the latest technology to be an agile organisation that effectively meets the needs of its member countries and clients.
The IDB said the third priority is effectiveness, noting that delivering better and more efficiently is crucial to have more impact on development goals.
“This has been a recurrent theme both at the IDB and with our fellow multilateral development banks (MDB) sister organisations. To improve the quality and effectiveness of our projects, we are creating a new ‘Strategic Operational Quality Review Division’ to work collaboratively with the rest of the bank on project impact on all stages of the project evolution,” the development bank said.
“We are also strengthening the risk management group to advise on project fiduciary risks, country exposure, and multi-risk impacts on portfolio and lending impact. Additionally, because critical social and environmental challenges persist across the region, the IDB is elevating the environmental and social solutions unit to a division.”
The IDB said that reinforcing synergies across the IDB will enable it to better promote the private sector as engine of prosperity in the region.
“We are creating the productivity, trade, and innovation sector, which will replace the current integration and trade sector,” it said, adding that the new sector will include three divisions, namely trade and investment, competitiveness, technology, and innovation, and agriculture and rural development.
The IDB said that promoting regional integration will help countries accelerate growth and tackle shared challenges and to support this effort, the bank is reforming the current vice presidency for countries into the vice presidency for countries and regional integration.
“This change will enhance our programming capacity, strengthen regional dialogue, and develop a robust project pipeline that is better equipped to create regional and global public goods,” the bank said.
CMC
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