|
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has opened institutions to finance projects aimed at finding solutions to problems between Brazil and its neighbors and among countries in Latin America.
The proposals should be presented by the public and private sector or civil society and should involve at least three countries. The line makes available up to US$ 10 million to help finance the proposals selected. The money may be used, for example, in projects for the opening of markets, cross-border transmission of disease, financial crises and preservation of shared ecosystems. The warning is published on site http://www.iadb.org/INT/BPR. The proposals should be sent to the IDB up to October 15, 2006. Last month the Inter-American Development Bank announced the approval of a US$ 10 million innovation loan for a program to strengthen business activity in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The program will foster competitiveness of clusters in the state by promoting a new private sector support policy and articulating a variety of instruments to promote sustainable practices in firms in 10 targeted areas: fruit production, information technology, autoparts, plastics, ornament stones (marbles & granite), ecotourism, apparel, aquaculture, sugarcane-related beverages and goat raising. The private sector will also have an active participation in the initiative by developing, together with international experts, strategic plans to improve the competitiveness for each cluster. The program will finance the actions recommended by each of these plans. The state of Bahia, in Northeastern Brazil, produces around 5 per cent of the country's national output. With a dynamic production system, its economy has been growing at a swifter pace than national average during the last decade. The program will mitigate the effects of market failures that are still constraining further growth. "The program will help the targeted economic sectors strengthen production linkages with local value chains, improve coordination and promote a better match between supply and demand of business services," said IDB Team Leader Gabriel Casaburi. "Selection of clusters was based, among other criteria, on geographic location and the presence of an agglomeration of specialized firms and public and private support, the significant weight of the sector in the economy, an existing business leadership and commitment, and a cooperation base between cluster firms and institutions." This innovative program is part of a four-project IDB initiative to foster competitiveness focusing on local clusters, including three other Brazilian states: Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and São Paulo. The 25-year IDB loan has a three-year grace period and a variable interest rate. Local counterpart funds will total US$ 6,667,000.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.