Today over 80 percent of the businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean have 10 employees or less and, depending on the country, they provide between 30 and 80 percent of employment. Yet, in spite of this new empowering view of microenterprises--as a means for the poor to earn their...

This Compete Caribbean project is a precursor to the proposed "Competitive Caribbean" initiative. This brief identifies and collates a summary of the details relating to as many formal and informal cluster initiatives in the 15 CARIFORUM countries that can be identified within the resources...

The IDB Group, guided by its Strategy for Microenterprise Development, has made the creation of a sustainable market of services to the sector one of its most important priorities during the past decade. This report presents an overview of the contributions the IDB has made to the...

This publication reviews IDB activities and operations in Guatemala, providing an individual section for each major development initiative.

The Bank has prepared a new set of strategies, presented in this volume, for the two overarching objectives established (Sustainable Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction and Promotion of Social Equity) and for each of the four priority areas highlighted in the Institutional Strategy...

This document presents the IDB Biofuels Sustainability Scorecard user's guide. The primary objective of the Scorecard is to provide a tool to think through the complex issues associated with biofuels from the field to the tank, thereby encouraging higher levels of sustainability in such...

The objective of this project is to contribute to the understanding of how technological changes influence public sector reforms, particularly, the theme of Civil Service and Technological Changes. This will be a step toward comparing, at the Latin American and Caribbean regional level, the...

This presentation discusses the impact of the Program for the Development of the Industrial Districts in Brazil. It includes the program background, an output and outcomes comparison, the key findings of the impact evaluation, and a series of lessons and recommendations. The presentation was...

The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) supports activities that promote the creation and strengthening of support services that will spur development of SMEs and stimulate demand for the use of such services. The Program for the Development of Industrial Districts in Brazil is a good example of...