Argentina and FONPLATA signed a financing agreement for the North of the country for USD 40 million
Ministry of Finance’s officials signed yesterday in Bolivia an agreement with the Financial Fund for the Development of La Plata Basin (FONPLATA), which will benefit SMEs of the Provinces of the North of the country.
The Chief of the Cabinet of the Ministry of Finance, Pablo Quirno, signed this Monday together with the President of FONPLATA, Juan Notaro Fraga, a 40-million-dollar loan agreement for the Access to productive Financing for the North of Argentina Program. The Undersecretary of International Financial Relations, Felix Martin Soto, also attended the meeting.
The Program will promote the access to credit for small and medium businesses in competitive conditions, granted by the Bank of Investment and Foreign Trade (BICE, for its acronym in Spanish). This way, the loan will contribute to the development of the productive sector of the North of Argentina and of La Plata Basin, benefitting SMEs in Jujuy, Salta, Tucuman, La Rioja, Catamarca, Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco, Formosa and Santiago del Estero. This Plan is part of the National Government’s guidelines and objectives to encourage the most vulnerable sector of the Argentine economy.
In addition, Quirno and Soto will attend today the opening of the new FONPLATA office in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Tomorrow, the 153rd Board of Directors Meeting of this organization will take place to address the political update in acquisitions and financing projects for other member-countries.
Nowadays, the Argentine Republic has 14 projects financed by FONPLATA for a total of 373 million dollars. These projects are mainly aimed at the improvement of infrastructure, productive development, strengthening of public investment planning, sanitary prevention, IT inclusion and emergency actions for flooding.
The mission of FONPLATA, created in 1974, is to achieve the integration of its member-countries for an inclusive development, contributing to reduce socio-economic inequalities, giving priority to the complementarity and combination of efforts to enable a better insertion in the region and the global market. Within that framework, FONPLATA works side by side with our country to promote and finance regional integration policies among the countries of La Plata Basin.