The president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Ilan Goldfajn, said this Tuesday June 13 in Bogotá that Latin America has a “triple challenge” in terms of the generation of social welfare and growth, as well as in terms of fiscal resources that can be faced with innovation.
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“Societies are demanding from us to improve inequality, poverty, deliver better public services in the areas of health, transportation and digitization (among others)“, Goldfajn told EFE, at the opening of the second global forum of the IDB Lab, the organization’s innovation laboratory, which will end tomorrow.
Goldfajn, first pointed out that there is a need for produce growth to “generate more resources” through productivity.
“We have to generate resources to be able to provide these social services that the public is asking for,” he insisted after stressing that, Although it has improved in recent times, poverty and inequality “are still there” and that is why it is important to lower the inequality indices from 0.50 to 0.30.
Second, he added that the growth should be linked to innovation “because innovation generates ideas, ideas generate value and value generates growth“.
Finally, the third challenge would be to face the lack of fiscal resources that could be solved with innovation, key, he says when it comes to, for example, “generate growth in productivity and prosperity“.
(See: IMF decreases prospects for economic growth in Colombia).
Innovation.
large scale technologies
About the next phases that the IDB will followthe president explained that the objective will be to generate “conditions, standards and technologies” so that they can be used “on a large scale“.
About, gave as an example the use of ‘blockchain’ technology (registry where digital transactions are recorded in a verifiable, permanent, anonymous manner and without intermediaries) so that it can be used “much more and much faster” or the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to “generate ideas and make life easier” of people, improving areas such as health or education.
More clarity is needed between the roles of the various players in the payment system.
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He even pointed to the importance of generating financial technologies such as instant payments by PIX that currently works in Brazil.
In relation to the previous phases of the IDB Lab, Goldfajn pointed out that it began with the development of solutions and ecosystems that could generate conditions for the private sector, followed by supporting small companies so that they could grow in innovation and in the last one both were combined.
Finally, at this time when trying to facilitate “scalability” and “standardization”, Goldfajn insisted on the importance of generating synergies and that there is a joint vision of priorities for example in social matters, climate change or investment in physical and digital infrastructure to boost productivity.
(See: Colombia is fourth in the receipt of remittances in Latin America).
EFE
