Projects
This project aims to set up a Regional Fund to provide Central American Integration System (SICA) countries with funds to run projects that both address and prevent natural disasters.
This is done in a context of the region’s vulnerability to climate change. To that end, the EU is putting together € 4 925 000 (out of € 1 705 495 000 as total investment with lead partner CABEI) towards the setup of a Regional Fund. These investments contribute to the mitigation of the impact by extreme events, while improving capacity to deal with climate change. For these reasons, the Fund serves as a catalyst to ensure focused action is maintained at national and international levels.
More specifically, the Fund aims to help build SICA countries’ capacities in the development of viable climate change projects by providing technical assistance for project preparation. It does so by facilitating:
- Climate risk assessment and studies for the development of disaster warnin...
Dates: Dec/2021 - Dec/2026 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Belize, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama
Costa Rica has set out to implement a very ambitious National Plan for Decarbonization 2018-2050 (Plan Nacional de Decarbonización, PND). In order to assist Costa Rica in achieving its carbon neutrality objectives, the EU -through LACIF- partnered with AFD and the National Bank of Costa Rica (BNCR) and decided to dedicate a total of 68.410.000 euros to this aim.
This project aims at catalysing the financing of the low carbon transition in Costa Rica. This is achieved via the mobilisation of the banking sector; by promoting investments and key infrastructures in priority areas for sustainable socio-economic development including SMEs, private sector development, e-mobility, energy, water and environment with a focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation.
More specifically, the project strives to support electric mobility schemes though a dedicated technical assistance, given that the transport sector is the main source of CO2 emission in the country.
The proj...
Dates: Apr/2021 - Oct/2025 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Costa Rica
LAGREEN is the first green bonds fund dedicated to Latin America. Its main purpose is twofold: to finance climate- and resource-friendly investments and to mobilise local and international private capital towards the issuance of more green bonds in Latin America.
LACIF is partnering with KfW to achieve the following objectives:
- to mobilise additional funding for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) implementation;
- to push local capital market development towards a transition to sustainable finance – thereby fostering transparency and long-term commitments in financial and economic activity;
- to reach a substantial greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and/or climate change adaption impact.
Dates: Dec/2020 - Dec/2035 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Peru
The TIF Program has a three-pillar framework (financial, social and environmental, known as Triple Bottom Line) and a twofold objective: downscaling financial services -being more inclusive and tackling the bottom of the pyramid- and promoting climate-smart finance.
The TIF Program, led by COFIDES, aims at bringing together the tools, actors and financing necessary to improve access to finance for low-income populations whilst reducing climate risk and vulnerability, especially in the case of smallholder farmers. More specifically, this initiative seeks to reduce climate risk in lending portfolios of Financial Service Providers and scaling up climate-smart lending, especially to urban and rural micro, medium and small-sized enterprises with no or limited access to the formal financial sector, including also small to medium and smallholder farmers.
TIF provides support to Financial Service Providers serving MSMEs through the provision of long-term loans (Debt Facili...
Dates: Oct/2020 - Oct/2025 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru
The aim of the Facility is to establish a strategic partnership between the European Commission, AECID and other LACIF-assessed financial institutions, to channel the Commission’s resources towards the identification and design of projects aimed at increasing the sustainability and resilience of cities in Latin America. The strategic Facility finances project identification activities and the different steps leading to the design of comprehensive investment projects, capacity building activities and knowledge management, to build up bankable projects.
Dates: Dec/2019 - Aug/2024 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru
The Seed Capital Risk Financing component for the Dinamica initiative addresses the bottlenecks identified in the Central American region, specifically regarding the accessibility of new and innovative enterprises to finance solutions in order to start their operations, be consolidated and grow.
The project, implemented by KfW and CABEI, provides vital start capital as contingent grants which is complemented by technical assistance for capacity building to Financial Intermediaries and MSMEs.
By doing this, the component contributes to developing entrepreneurship and innovation and is therefore an ideal complement to the DINAMICA I initiative. The project promotes equitable socio-economic development and stimulates employment in the private sector.
Dates: Dec/2018 - Dec/2027 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama
The Green MSMEs lnitiative aims at reducing carbon emissions in the Central American Region by ensuring the provision of financial and non-financial services to support renewable power generation and energy efficiency measures in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. In order to do so, the lnitiative contains three main components:
- Technical Assistance for MSMEs as well as Participating Financial lntermediaries,
- Partial Risk Guarantees for MSMEs,
- Financing (loans) for Environmental lnvestments for MSMEs.
This lnitiative represents a continuation of the "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programme for SME in Central America". The mentioned Program was successfully implemented and the achievements and lessons learnt constituted the basis for this Initiative implemented by KfW and CABEI.
...Dates: Dec/2018 - Dec/2034 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama
This program aimed at financing priority wastewater projects in selected cities in Costa Rica. LACIF contributed to this KfW-led project with preparatory studies to close the significant information gap and allowed investments in improved wastewater infrastructure, including its rehabilitation, expansion and new construction in urban areas. The project improved environmental conditions and created positive impacts in public health. In particular, the LACIF contribution encompassed:
- 3 feasibiity studies and final designs for Sardinal-El Coco, Gran Puntaneras and Tamarindo
- Provision of consulting services or the launch of tenders for the investment phase of 7 projects that already had final desings
Dates: Jul/2017 - Dec/2023 | Status: COMPLETED | Countries: Costa Rica
The eco.business Fund is a joint initiative of investors intent on supporting the promotion of business and consumption practices that contribute to biodiversity conservation, the sustainable use of natural resources, climate change mitigation and adaptation to its impact. In providing financing to the Fund’s target group for investing in activities that conserve nature and foster biodiversity, the eco.business Fund seeks investments that yield both financial and environmental returns. The financing can be provided directly or through local financial institutions. In addition, final beneficiaries and local lending institutions can count on high impact technical assistance provided by the eco.business Development Facility. The project is led by KfW and managed by Finance in Motion.
Dates: Dec/2016 - Feb/2033 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru
The LACIF contribution to this AECID-led initiative aims to improve water and sewerage infrastructures and contribute to reducing the risk of diseases caused by deficient water management in the Latin American region through the development of various projects. These are grouped into two components: Component I, projects for adaptation to climate change (ACC) and Component II, projects for the integrated management of water resources.
The projects include the reinforcement of capacities associated with the programs; studies developed in the pre-investment phase to identify new investments in new actions; review of regulations and the development of methodologies, tools and manuals which have an impact on future investments.
Dates: Dec/2013 - Jun/2024 | Status: ONGOING | Countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela
DINAMICA focused on promoting entrepreneurial and private sector development for employment and income generation in order to contribute to economic development and poverty reduction in Central America. More specifically, the project, which was led by KfW and implemented by CABEI, aimed at:
- Promoting the entrepreneurial environment in order to facilitate the creation of new and innovative enterprises;
- Supporting financial sector development in order to provide adequate access to finance for MSMEs.
Dates: Dec/2013 - Sep/2022 | Status: COMPLETED | Countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama
LACIF supported AFD and CAF in this program whose goal was to increase knowledge of urban development and transport in the region, by identifying new sources of financing for public transport projects (public-private partnerships, land valuation, etc.); identifying the regulatory obstacles to innovative transport projects and the way to surmount them; highlighting the potential of local communities to carry out this type of projects; and making it possible to define the technical and financial contours of specific projects in targeted cities (master plans and prefeasibility studies), thus promoting the emergence and implementation of public transport projects in the region.
Dates: Oct/2011 - Apr/2017 | Status: COMPLETED | Countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay
This program was aimed at financing investments in renewable energy and environmental protection projects in Latin America. To complement the investment funding of KfW, the EU granted technical assistance funds through LACIF to carry out studies that fostered innovative technologies and projects in the sector with the aim of converting them into potential investment projects for CAF. These included feasibility studies and renewable energy potential assessments for Latin American countries, among other climate change projects and initiatives.
Dates: Mar/2011 - Feb/2021 | Status: COMPLETED | Countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay
The overall objective of the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program for SMEs in Central America was to contribute to the protection of the climate and the environment. LACIF supported KfW and CABEI at providing efficient and sustainable access to financing products for environmental investments which correspond to the needs of SMEs in Central America. The Program had two main components:
1) Financing of environmental investments – Provision of funds by the Program Executing Agency, CABEI, to local financial institutions that channel resources to SMEs for energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy projects.
2) Technical Assistance, studies and promotional activities – Including technical assistance for financial institutions, energy audits of SMEs and feasibility studies of small renewable energy projects; information material and promotional events.
Dates: Nov/2010 - Dec/2016 | Status: COMPLETED | Countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua
