Latin America and the Caribbean

IFC's Strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean

In Latin America and the Caribbean, IFC is at the forefront of private sector initiatives aimed at making markets work for businesses and individuals. We promote long-term partnerships with clients, a business-friendly environment, and inclusive economic growth to create opportunities and reduce poverty.

IFC’s strategy in the region focuses on four pillars:

• Inclusive growth: Increase access to finance, basic goods and services, and infrastructure with a particular focus on the poor, women, and indigenous populations.
• Competitiveness and innovation: Address bottlenecks in infrastructure and logistics by increasing public-private partnerships and improving the investment climate; expanding vocational and tertiary education; and supporting new sectors and products, such as mobile banking.
• Regional and global integration: Improving legal frameworks for trade logistics; integrating regional financial markets; increasing south-south initiatives; and strengthening energy networks and transportation. Sustainable growth and competitiveness depend on integration.
• Climate change: Catalyze private-sector involvement in addressing mitigation and adaptation issues in the region. Mitigation activities address renewable energy, cleaner production, and land use, while adaptation focuses on waste water treatment, disaster insurance, and zoning codes.

Our strategy is aimed at tackling key development challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the Caribbean and Central America, which have some of the highest levels of income inequality, IFC is helping businesses and communities strengthen their comparative advantages. In middle-income countries, such as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, we promote access to education, telecommunications, renewable energy, and financial services to under-served segments.

We have developed an integrated World Bank Group approach that includes both investments and advisory services. This approach addresses the following areas:

• Improving the business environment
• Supporting projects that reach under-served people at the base of the economic pyramid
• Increasing our focus on smaller countries, especially in the Caribbean and Central America
• Promoting investments in clean technology to mitigate climate change
• Supporting private sector participation in infrastructure
• Increasing access to finance, with an emphasis on micro, small, and medium enterprises
• Supporting our Amazon strategy, which covers the Cerrado region and the Brazilian Northeast