Ilan Goldfajn is appointed as the new president of the IDB – El Sol de Mazatlán

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) elected Brazilian Ilan Goldfajn as president this Sunday, who plans to focus on fighting poverty and climate change with a global economic crisis as a backdrop.

“For the first time in history, the IDB will be chaired by a Brazilian,” elected with 80 percent of the vote, Brazil’s Economy Minister Paulo Guedes tweeted.

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The voting power of each country varies depending on the number of shares. The three main contributors to the IDB are the United States (30 percent of the capital), Brazil and Argentina (11.4 percent each).

Argentina withdrew its candidate Cecilia Todesca Bocco and supported the one from Brazil.

“We agreed and joined the majority consensus and Argentina achieved two key positions, the vice presidency and infrastructure management plus the gender institute,” official Argentine sources told AFP, who specified that they had supported the Brazilian candidate.

So, apart from the Brazilian, only Gerardo Esquivel from México, who obtained 8.21 percent of the votes, remained in the running; that of Chile, Nicolás Eyzaguirre (9.93 percent); and that of Trinidad and Tobago, Gerard Johnson (1.61 percent), diplomatic sources informed AFP.

In a statement, the IDB announced Goldfajn’s election during an extraordinary meeting of the board of governors at the bank’s headquarters in Washington, with delegations participating in person and virtually.

“As president, Goldfajn will oversee the operations and administration of the bank, which works with the public sector in Latin America and the Caribbean,” he says.

He will also chair the executive boards of the IDB and IDB Invest (which works with the private sector in the region) and will lead the donor committee of the IDB Lab, the Bank’s laboratory for innovative development projects, he details.

The Joe Biden government congratulated the Brazilian on his appointment as head of a bank that “plays a vital role in promoting the economic, social, and environmental well-being” of the region, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

Poverty and climate

“The United States looks forward to working with President Goldfajn to implement the set of reforms that shareholders have established to drive sustainable, inclusive, and resilient development, private sector-led growth, climate ambition, and improve the institutional effectiveness of the IDB,” it adds.

Goldfajn’s priorities for the next five years as president are the fight against poverty and inequality, not only income but also gender, climate change and investment in physical and digital infrastructure, as he declared this week in an interview with the AFP.

“The next president is going to have to face an IDB that has low morale, with many conflicts, much more ideological, that needs to be reenergized” but “this is both a challenge and an opportunity,” the Brazilian declared.

He anticipated that he will have to “work with people who come from a very conflictive period.” Goldfajn replaces the American Mauricio Claver-Carone, who was dismissed in September for breaking the rules by favoring an employee with whom he had a romantic relationship and whose tenure was involved in controversy.

Goldfajn, 56, wants to make the IDB the “most important multilateral institution in the region” and considers it essential that the president be “independent, nonpartisan.”

Although his name sounded like a favorite since he applied for the position, it was unknown if he had the approval of the Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva since he was appointed by the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, who lost the elections.

“There is no one in Brazil with an objection to my name,” said Goldfajn three days ago, who until now was head of the Latin American department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a position that remains vacant and of great importance for the region.

“Leadership”

The institution created in 1959 must also optimize the resources it already has before increasing capital and recovering “leadership”, according to him, because difficult times are coming that do not know how long they will last, with galloping inflation driven by the war in Ukraine , rising interest rates and a global economic slowdown that threatens to undermine the post-pandemic recovery.

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Despite the headwinds, Goldfajn finds itself in a region with “tremendous opportunities in the areas of digitization, inclusive growth, sustainability and many more,” Jason Marczak, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Center for Latin America, said Friday. , in an act organized by this reflection group.