ALIDE Awards in Recognition to Good practives in Development Financial Instituions were granted during ALIDE 39th Meeting of the General Assembly that took place in Curaçao, Netherland Antilles, Antillas Holandesas, on May 19 and 20, 2009. The objective of these awards is to identify and distinguish the best practices and innovations in products and services Latin America and the Caribbean development banking, to acknowledge and highlight the work done by these institutions for the economic and social development of the countries in the region.

This Contest second Edition has recognized as good practices en la Financial Products Category to Agroamigo: Rural Microcredit Program, from Banco do Nordeste de Brasil. The objective of this program is to contribute in the development of family agriculture in the areas of activity of the Bank, by granting rural microcredits, oriented and accompanied, in a sustainable manner, and promoting the increase in the income and the improvement of the life quality of recipient families. This program is important because from the Bank’s experience in microcredits in urban areas, it develops a methodology to adapt it to the rural environment, base don the principles of orientation towards credit, accessibility through the credit advisor, presence in all the northeastern region and credit sustainability. This Program, created in 2005, has performed 567 thousand operations to February 2009. This amount is equivalent to US$245 million, covering 1,317 municipalities through 158 branches of the Bank. In this same category the Productive Chains Program, from Nacional Financiera S.N.C. (NAFIN), Mexico was presented an award. The objective of this program is to offer cash on accounts receivable to suppliers, carrying out electronic factoring operations.

The Program was developed under a modern mechanism supported on an Internet platform for the institution’s products and services reach the businesses massively at a low cost, in order to reactivate credit in the Mexican economy. As a result of the program, only in the last year 1.2 million enterprises have been benefited and operative costs have been reduced, as more than 90% of the volume of operations is carried out via Internet. The relationship with financial intermediaries has changed as paper transactions have disappeared; alliances have been entered with large public and private corporations, developing their value chains. With this initiative, the factoring market is attended in more than 60%, from the previous 2%.

In the category Management and Technologic Modernization, the winner was the Institutional Enhancing Program, from Federación de Cajas de Crédito y de Bancos de los Trabajadores (FEDECRÉDITO), from El Salvador. The objective of this program is to modernize and implement a self sustainable financial management and operative financial system integrating under the same platform and the same management principles and standards all the entities belonging to FEDECREDITO system. The use of the proposed schemes to improve the administrative and financial management of these institutions have made it possible to increase, in the 2003-2008 period, the deposits captured from US$43.6 million to US$189.1 million, the loan portfolio from US$233.7 million to US$568.8 million, the number of associates from 423 mil to 590 mil, and the net worth from US$71.4 million to US$145.5.

Finally, in the category Information, Technical Assistance and Social Responsibility, the award went to Estratégia Negocial de Desenvolvimento Regional Sustentável – DRS, (Regional Development Business Strategy) from Banco do Brasil; through which the Bank wants to promote sustainable, inclusive and participative job and income generation, taking into account the local social, environmental, institutional, political and cultural characteristics. This will be economically viable, socially fair, environmentally correct, and will consider cultural diversity. This strategy represents an evolution in the Bank’s standing point as an agent of the development of the country as it has incorporated social, environmental and cultural variables in its investment decisions, and its business vision goes beyond the economic aspects. In order to implement this strategy, the Bank has developed a methodology based on the following stages: customer aware raising and training, identification of the productive activity to be developed, creation of DRS teams, preparation of the business plan, analysis, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Since the application of this strategy, 4,681 DRS business plans have been developed in 4,800 municipalities, with 1.210.743 involved in more than 100 different productive