FIAS helped Latin American and Caribbean clients improve their business environments through sub-national Doing Business diagnostics.

The perception of Latin America and the Caribbean as a region of middle-income countries hides glaring income inequalities – in fact, the highest in the world. Poverty levels are persisting and progress on social indicators is painfully slow. More than 25 percent of Latin Americans live with less than $1 per day. Latin America is also falling behind in GDP growth. From 1997 to 2006 (projected), the region will have grown at 2.8 percent while world growth will have averaged 3.9 percent, split between 2.7 percent for advanced economies and 5.3 percent for developing markets. Latin America may be the only other region, in addition to Sub-Saharan Africa, not to reach the Millennium Development Goals of halving the 1990 level of income poverty by 2015. FIAS’ demand driven strategy for Latin America is to carefully select countries and projects where it is most likely to have significant impact.

Examples:
1) In Peru, FIAS continued its successful partnership with the IFC Technical Assistance Facility by supporting the municipality of Lima in the reform of construction permits. In July 2006, the project was awarded first prize in the Administrative Simplification Category at the Good Governmental Practices during the Peru Conference.

2) In Jamaica, FIAS completed a diagnostic study of the investment climate and a study of the country’s tourism sector. However, recognizing that punctual interven­tions in small islands are usually not cost efficient, FIAS is increasingly relying on regional approaches for the Caribbean. One example is the ongoing project with six independent members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to use benchmarking to stimulate inter-island competition. Another example is the recently initiated tourism linkages work across the OECS.

Past Projects:
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For more information about the region, please contact the Regional Program Coordinator: Mierta Capaul.