Rio de Janeiro – The Rio de Janeiro city hall is going to receive US$ 1.045 billion from the World Bank (IBRD) for slum urbanization works. The agreement was signed today (20th) by mayor Eduardo Paes and the IBRD’s director in Brazil, the Senegalese Makthar Diop.
The funds will be cleared in two instalments. The first one, of US$ 545 million, will be made available in the next few days, and the second one, of US$ 500 million, will be disbursed in coming months. The city hall will have 30 years to pay the loan back.
Eduardo Paes informed that the funds will be used for reducing by 20% the city hall’s debt with the federal government, currently at 7.4 billion Brazilian reals (US$ 4.2 billion). Thus, Paes has managed to reduce the interest on the debt from 9% to 6%, which will save up to 400 million reals (US$ 227 million) of the city’s funds for new investment.
The loan granted to Rio is the largest ever made available by the World Bank to a given municipality, and is part of a strategy aiming to improve social services to the poor. During the signing of the agreement, Makthar Diop claimed that he hopes other cities are able to do the same.
"The World Bank is very pleased to aid in the country’s development through a city such as Rio de Janeiro," he claimed.
According to Diop, the loan was cleared by the IBRD after the municipal government achieved its goals of improving the city’s expenses, expanding healthcare and education programmes and modernizing its management.
The Brazilian minister of Finance, Guido Mantega, attended the signing of the meeting and was involved in the agreement. He stated that the government’s policy stimulates fiscal solidity, and at the same time enables the development of states and municipalities. "This seems contradictory, but it is feasible."
The Rio city hall had already announced that it intends to allocate the loan’s funds to the Morar Carioca housing programme, which aims to reurbanize all of the city’s slums by 2020.
The IBRD’s loan to the Rio city hall had to be approved by the Federal Senate, which authorized the operation in early August.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum