The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) increases its presence in Argentina with the installation of its own headquarters in the City of Buenos Aires, the start of new projects and the increase in fund allocations for the country, which already reach $379 million.
Last week, CABEI authorities carried out a supervision and follow-up mission of the projects and works in progress. These are 8 operations throughout the country focused on issues such as infrastructure and improvements in access to health, digital transformation in SMEs, education, rurality, older adulthood, among others.
In a dialogue with Télam, CABEI’s Credit Operations Supervision coordinator, Carlos Quintanilla, anticipated that the entity is in talks to start a new initiative in Chaco, related to security and police infrastructure.
“This is a security-oriented project for police infrastructure in Chaco and the credit documentation is being prepared, which must then be approved by CABEI’s board of directors,” Quintanilla said.
Days ago, CABEI announced the installation of a permanent office in Argentina that will be located in downtown Buenos Aires and will allow the entity to have a daily institutional presence. For Quintanilla, the permanent office “will allow a closer monitoring of projects that we have in execution, both in the administrative part of the follow-up of the loan and in the supervision and in the issues related to the operation itself”.
“Undoubtedly it will be an added value for the bank to have a headquarters here,” added the executive. It is estimated that in the second half of the year it will be fully operational.
Quintanilla was part of the CABEI delegation that arrived in the country this week to learn about the status of the programs and projects that are being carried out with the entity’s financial and technical support.
At the moment the multilateral development bank has eight current operations in the country for a total of US$379 million. The projects are: Strengthening Research and Development Capacities; Digital transformation of MSMEs; Expansion and health coverage; and Post-emergency Rural Recovery and Development.
The initiatives of Protection Actions Against Gender-Based Violence are also part of it; Program to Improve Educational Access and Quality; and Strengthening of Health Infrastructure.
The mission of the financial entity visited the works of some of these projects in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos, Mendoza and Santa Fe.
Within the framework of the Health Infrastructure Program for Penitentiary Units and Border Sanitary Units, for which CABEI granted a loan of US$50 million, the mission toured the Penitentiary Unit No. 23 of Florencio Varela in Buenos Aires and the Sanitary Unit installed at the border crossing between Argentina and Chile in Mendoza.
In addition, the delegation visited the facilities of two vaccine storage centers, one located in the City of Santa Fe and the other in Paraná (Entre Ríos), which were built during the pandemic.
The authorities also toured works in Morón of a center against Violence for Gender Reasons that has a financing of US$ 50 millions and oversaw a technology center for digital transformation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Asked about the possibility of undertaking new projects in addition to the one mentioned in Chaco, Quintanilla explained that “speed is set by the countries themselves” based on their requirements and proposals, and announced that alternatives are being considered in sectors such as roads and hospital infrastructure.
As an example of virtuous work, Quintanilla mentioned the construction in the country of modular units to attend to the health emergency during the coronavirus pandemic. “They proposed the construction of health centers with a prefabricated modular system that was going to give them the necessary speed. We analyzed and approved the project and it was carried out within the conceived deadlines.”
CABEI is a multilateral development financial institution founded more than 60 years ago by Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
Argentina has been part of CABEI since 1995 and it is one of the 7 extra-regional members together with Korea, Taiwan, Spain, Mexico, Cuba and Colombia.
CABEI’s programs in the country are executed by different ministries of the national State under the coordination of the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs led by Gustavo Beliz.
