Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion 20240703

Priorities for Economic Development for the caribbean and latin america. It included access to Digital Technology and application and the impact for climate change. This is about 30 minutes. Gabriela good morning. The p i am a business journalist for cnn and i am delighted to be moderating this conversation. My name is gabriela frias. Im a business journalist for cnn and i am delighted to be moderating this conversation. Were honored to have you and those following this live transmission. And now i would like to welcome to the stage idb president Ilan Goldfajn and World Bank President ajay banga. [applause] hello. How are you . Very well. This is a historic moment, so im delighted to be here talking to you. First things first, youre both relatively new in your roles, you both come from the private sector, and you both want to mobilize more capital to achieve more development. Why is it so important right now . President goldfajn. Im going to let him go first since hes been in the job longer than i have. Just a few months. Its interesting because we are going to have this difference for some time. Youre always going to pass through me, or just a few months. Well, age above beauty, so [indiscernible] so, i think its very important what we are doing here. Weve known each other for some time. We were together in the private sector, then when i was at central bank, and now at the public sector. Its interesting because we were together and i was hearing ajay mention impact and how he sees things, and i realized i was saying this too. Its very interesting that we are all talking about how important it is for us its not the amount of money we disperse, but the actual impact. And for us, scale and impact is the name of the game. And to do scale, you need to join forces. We need to work differently but Work Together differently. We have been asked by the stakeholders, by everybody, you need to increase your ambition. And thats what we are doing here in terms of the mou, in terms of the agreements we are having together, and thats very important. You ask me why now. Well, first it is because the other day i was reading yogi berra quotes and he says, the future aint what it used to be. We are in a point of no return in terms of climate, so we need trillions, but we are in the billions. So thats the first reason. Second reason is that i see a consensus in the region and i see a consensus out of the region that we need to change. And finally, leaderships. For some reason, we were both elected to make this change. So thats why its now. Thank you. The only thing id add to that, because thats actually a very complete answer, is that in my three months between being nominated and getting elected, i had a chance to meet 90odd countries around the world, including ilan at a couple of events. This message that he spoke about, the need for change, the need for speed, the need for impact, the need to measure how many girls went to school, how many people got a better job because of a skilling institute, how much Greenhouse Gas emissions we avoided as compard to how many dollars we put in or how many projects we finance. That aspect of outsidein thinking rather than insideout thinking came through from clients, from stakeholders, from ngos, from everybody. A sense of urgency attached to it is because i believe that the gains that we made on Poverty Alleviation as a society over the last three or four decades, a large part of it was enabled by the generation of jobs. What has happened during the pandemic and has got multiplied and exacerbated by the impact of climate, and by fragility and violence and food insecurity, all these crises have got together like a perfect storm. They are intertwined, they are interrelated, and the challenges therefore are at a point where its like a geometric progression. You cannot win by yourself. You have to join forces, and you have to join forces not just between the multilateral banks or with governments, but actually with civil society, philanthropy and the private sector. Because the trillions that he referred to do not exist in a governments Balance Sheet or in the Balance Sheet of an mdb, but they do exist in our system with capital. So, we have to think of how to derisk and enable private capital to come in as well. Its a complex rubiks cube, but the reality is it is a rubiks cube. Its intertwined. Its a very interesting a different approach as Multilateral Development banks era also because you highlight different. Different how . Since youve worked in different projects as Multilateral Development banks, as institutions, but when you say different, how should we understand that . Well, the biggest difference, i think, has to be in this idea of impact. What tends to happen in a lot of our systems is that the way the process works is you will try and create a country strategy, a Country Partnership, framework is what the world bank calls it. Im sure they have a different name, but its the sae thing. We agree there you go. We agree on whats important for the next few years with the country and our teams, and then you try and focus resources on them, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. You end up spending a lot of time on trying to find projects that work with that Country Partnership framework. What we cannot afford to lose sight of is, finally, whats the end result of that . We cannot measure the project and we cannot celebrate the approvals. We have to celebrate the execution and the change in the lives of people. That celebration is a very different celebration from the insideout approach that i think over the years most Development Finance institutions have come to be. Thats the biggest difference. Its also very complete, and i agree a hundred percent. We need that cultural change. Our institutions somehow have the culture of celebrating approvals, celebrating disbursements, and we need to change that through new incentives, new processes, new mentality, new country strategy, and also what the governments or our clients from the private sector expect from us. Impact from the beginning, from to the country representatives. We need all to change that. Gabriela, i think that, if i could just add to that for a second, i think that we all have to realize that at the end of the day, the money we put in is a small percentage of the money that country needs to make a difference. Its not the dollars, its the knowledge and the capacity and the skills and the expertise that we bring and our teams bring. We are very blessed by the teams we have. Right to the lowest level of our institutions are very qualified people, who have chosen to come to these institutions and not go o some other place where they personally, financially may have been better off. Theyre here for a purpose in their minds. Our job as the head of the institutions is to channelize that person, channelize their willingness to do this, and give them a chance to hit the ball out of the park, since were talking yogi berra, and we should be thinking about that in that logic. Yeah, absolutely. Recent visits of ajay banga and Ilan Goldfajn to peru and jamaica youve recently traveled to peru and jamaica together. We covered it. Its a different trip, both of you. How did that influence the vision of collaboration . And maybe it was probably at a dinner time in lima maybe or n peru that you come up with this new way of doing things. It was an historic trip. I think it was the first time the two president s traveled together to the region. And yes, we were, in some small time, we just had some coffee and we said, we need to think about he remembers it as coffee. I remember it as a glass of wine. [laughter] you know what . I had coffee. He had wine. No, im just kidding. But then we agreed that we need to implement what we were talking about, what we are looking at. We need to somehow choose a few items that are important to us. We cannot just say, well, lets do it in general. We want to be very specific, very clear of where are we going to implement . Where are we going to Work Together . So what actually happened was that, first of all, when i started thinking about this trip, i reached out to him to say, listen, lets convert conversation to action. And the best action we can do is to be there together, because that changes the dialogue on the ground. He was amazing. He had a whole series of conflicting trips. He hasnt told you this, but he flew back and forth between the course of my trip in an effort to make it possible to attend both the peru leg of my journey and the jamaican leg of my journey and in the process convinced me that he cared deeply. Even though i knew him as a friend, that one action showed how deeply he cared about the topic. That was the first thing. Example, set your own example. The second thing was that when we did this back with a napkin discussion, we were trying to prioritize three things. We have come from a world where three things is what we can focus on. Theres a hundred things we have to do together. That doesnt mean, nobody should take the message that the other 97 things are not important to the Interamerican Development bank or to the world bank. Its just that these three are what he and i will put all our own energy and personal capital into in an effort to make sure that our institutions and the governments we work with treat these with the priority they deserve. Those three were chosen for that impact across the region, rather than an individual country. That was how we ended up with this list of three. Let me just please. Ive been saying that prioritizing is not choosing not to do what you dont want to do. Its choosing not to do the things you really want to do but are not chosen for priorities. You have a lot of things you want to do and youre prioritizing the ones that you can implement at that time. Got it. Lets talk about this era of working together, specifically on the areas that you decided to focus. And probably maybe the next following question is, were there other areas that you consider as well, but then discard it . We are focusing on three spaces, the amazon, but not only from the point of view of reforestation or slowing down deforestation, but actually approaching it as a full ecosystem, which includes the people who live off the amazon. If you dont address them and their needs merely its. If you dont do that, youre putting a bandaid on an open wound. We have to fix the whole piece. Its about both the protection of the amazon, but also the prosperity of the people who live in the amazon. Ilan educated me that day about some of the numbers to do with the amazon. But the three things that stuck in my head from those numbers, one was the size of the amazon and its contribution to our ecosystem. Water, forestry, biodiversity, carbon sink, the amount of carbon it stores, all that stuff. There are lots of good numbers, but thats the first piece. The second part he educated me about was that 40 of the 45, 50 Million People who live in the amazon live below the poverty line, and 40 , 50 of them do not have access to sanitation, let alone jobs. That i hadnt quite understood until that evening with him. I knew it was a challenge, i just didnt know that it was such a big challenge. That, to me, was a big difference. Thats why the amazon became an important part of this. If by 2028, brazil as one country, as part of the amazon wants to meet its own nationally determined contributions, theyre going to need 5 billion a year objective to do something about that. Then after that, theyre going to need threeplus billion every year to keep it going. This is real large sums of money. That picked up the one big topic, how do we help them raise money for this . Second big topic that came up as a result of this was around the idea of digitization and how digitization could deliver better governance, of course, but learning circumstances. We started discussing rural urban divides, gender divides in the access and affordability of Digital Technology. We said, lets pick both the topics, access rural urban columbia as an opportunity, but also learning loss across the continent that happened accelerated during covid19. Can we use an idea of Digital Technology to connect the schools better, enable the schools and teachers and students to be better educated . That became the second one. The third one was the caribbean and the impact that climate has on the caribbean. Again, a topic that i actually had addressed in paris with Prime Minister mia mottley. It is important to me as well, and to him. Thats the three we chose. Now, ill let him tell you about a couple more that were in our list, but we couldnt prioritize in our list of three. That doesnt mean were not working on them. So you can see that we have chosen very defined, very specific narrow spaces. Narrows. For example, in the amazon we have this amazon forever umbrella program, which is basically want to get the financing, either we have amazon bonds or other type of financing we want to bring, we to think about how to help countries to have the projects they need. We want to be able to let the countries of the amazon have ths coordination. As ajay say, this is an holistic its about the people. Its about the cities, because there are cities there. It is about the economy. You have to offer something different. In the caribbean, it is about resilience. Let me give you an example. We just had a hurricane in the bahamas. The cost was 26 of gdp. 26 of gdp . Gdp. And thats just one example. We are having more natural disasters with larger costs. Thinking about resilience, thinking about how can we help this region, is fundamental. Can we do it in terms of building more resilience . Can we have financing that gives some insurance . We are going to think about the Systemic Risk for disasters together. One institution can think about the cat bonds, the catastrophe bonds. Other institutions can think about how we can give some time for the countries to not pay their debt while this happens. I know that the world bank has announced some suspension. We can think about these things in more general terms. Finally, digitalization is something that, ajay, you mentioned, and its very important. For the region, digitalization is about education, which we have chosen, but we have digitalization for health. We think about digitalization for governments. When you asked me what court left out, those were those we left out. For example, you were talking to me about my experience with Financial Inclusion. To me, Financial Inclusion, digitization is an element to part of that, but weve currently not addressed that here. Were trying to focus on learning gaps and access. That doesnt mean that Financial Inclusion and digitization is not important to our individual institutions. Its just that weve got to pick something, and thats all e are doing. Similarly, in the issue with the caribbean, weve got the world bank in jamaica, wed launched these catastrophe bonds, which are like an insurance in the event of a bad event happening. Weve done that for other countries around, but not all of them. We would love to do them for the region of the caribbean as a whole. We believe that gives people something in their pocket for a bad day. Its not just debt repayment, which weve announced. Its also having financing available for the bad whether through insurance or through deferred drawdown options, things that the bank has been doing in different countries. The question is, can we scale them . Can we learn from each other . Can we do more together . Thats the idea. You wanted to add something . No, i wanted to add that what we can do together is not only in the public side, but were going to talk also about what are we going to do in terms of the private sector together. Thats also some part of it, which is very important. And finally, we have our personal experiences. You mentioned Financial Inclusion. I work at the central bank, and Financial Inclusion is very deep into what i feel proud about what we have done. This is a very important work. He was my regulator when he was in central bank, so hes gone from being a friend to not such a friend to being a friend again. You see how the regulator will continue to be a friend, and thats a major success correct. That you continue to have friends afterwards. In spite of years later. The private sector part is an important part. As i said right at the beginning, were trying to crowd in that money. Without that, there is no way we get to these numbers. Both of us are trying to do it in different ways. In the context of this specific thing, there is an effort between what we call miga, which is our insurance guarantee agency, and their work with idb invest and our ifc. With idb invest and ifc, we have sourcing power. With miga, we have the capacity to reduce the risk that is inherent in those projects for the private sector. Not the risk that they should bear of execution, of management, of delivery, but the risks that they do not know how to price and understand. Those risks sometimes will reduce their energy or their desire to play. If we can lay off that risk for them, you remove an unnecessary friction point in attracting private capital. Thats what were trying to do together. Gabriela frias] id just like to add, because were pressuring time, if you have anything else to add in regards to this new era of collaboration when Multilateral Development institutions are very much needed, when time is of the essence, what would you like to add . Ill say, ajay has been very active in that. He has been pushing us for more collaboration. There are several areas that i think are very important. We were there in jamaica, and ajay mentioned something very important. We cannot go there to the same people with different standards, with different ways. Theyre the same people and we keep telling them, do it in tht way. Somebody else comes 10 minutes later and says, lets do it in a different way. We need to have a standard. We need to reduce the burden in terms of our clients. Standards means, for example, procurement. Can we look at the procurement, the way we do it . Can we have a standard for that . And thats a very good place to start. Another thing, how do we measure things . Ajay has been pushing for measuring in terms of climate. We look together. Yes, we do need to look together how we measure that. We need to do other stuff, like Credit Ratings, together. Because if we are going to go from billions and we need trillions yes. And i have an issue with derisk because risks doesnt disappear. Yeah, its just passed to another place. I like to change to rerisk, probably i wont be able to do it, but rerisk means that we need to talk to the Credit Rating agencies. We need to talk to everybody, say, well, where is this risk going to land and how are we going to deal with it . All of these issues, we need to Work Together in this new era. And then we have been asked to do it, and what were doing today is a response to not only what we want to do, both of us, but what i believe the system wants from us. The topics he raised about us working together on standards, on rating agencies, and on things of that type, hes going to become the head of our Informal Group of mdbs later this year. Hes going to take charge of trying to get these done. I was the one raising them at a recent breakfast, but im now giving the pass to him. Thats our partnership at work. But the closing thought ill leave you with is we need all shoulders at the wheel. We need concessional capital from philanthropies and richer countries. We need the private sector to come in for the right reasons. Not that they shouldnt make money, but we need them to come in for the right reasons and with the right risk profile. We need multilateral banks to Work Together. We need governance in countries to work well together. Theres the issue of all shoulders at the wheel, is the message i would leave you with. Well, thank you so much, president banga. Thank you so much, president goldfajn. Now let me ask you to get ready to sign the mou. If you could please help us with setting the table and we can proceed to sign it. This is a new way to do it. The table comes to us. Exactly. Yeah, because its not ready. While its ready, maybe let me just remind you that there are people connected in this live transmission. If theres a final message that you want to serve for them . Yeah. While we wait for the table, let me give you a final message. Yes. I like to think about us as the ones that implement stuff, that we go from the talk to the walk. If somebody would like to remember us, remember what we have done and not what we have talked. I think our institutions need to be focused on implementation. There are too many conferences. There are too many seminars. I like to think about us as the ones that will actually take it to the ground with our country strategies, with our representatives, with our connections, with our clients, either the governments or the private sector with idb invest, idb. The only thing i would add to that is that i believe that the world bank has had a very storied history. It got started for various reasons. They evolved and changed and has built itself over the years into a premier institution, but our future cannot rely on our past. Our world is changing with very severe challenges. Our future requires us to redesign these institutions for the next 30, 40 years to be elemental in driving developmental change, because my grandchild has to enjoy her world as much as i have. I believe in that with all my passion. Thats what we have to do. Thank you so much. We wish you success in this endeavor, in this new era. Thank you. And now, if you could please proceed to the table to sign the mou. Thank you so much to both of you. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you, gabriela. Thank you. Just a reminder that this is a historic moment, as i was telling you before, between the world bank and the idb, where both of, please go ahead, where both organizations established their commitment to collaborate and Work Together for the Sustainable Development of amazon region, the caribbean, and digitalization in latin america and the caribbean, including education. Very good. [applause] and i would like to thank here for ajay for coming here for this partnership. We couldnt have done it without your support for this historic moment. Thank you. Im very happy to be here and im very happy that its very few pages in the mou. So thats a start. Thank you both. Have a good day. [applause] [laughter] [applause] today, immigration officials testify on the Homeland Security departments procedure for migrants accounted at the u. S. Southern order border. This comes after months after the expiration of the title 42 emerging health order. Emergency health order. Live coverage starts at 2 30 eastern on cspan, cspan now and online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more including comcast. You think this is just a Community Center . It is way more than that. Comcast is partnering with 1000 committee centers to create wifi enabled so studen and families can have the tools to be ready for erything. 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