Invitation Wording Rhyming With 3

ECUADOR AND IDB SIGN AGREEMENT TO EXTEND COVERAGE RURAL WATER AND SANITATION

• The U.S. Ambassador Luis Gallegos and Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington signed contracts to fund a loan and a grant from the Government of Spain that will help improve water and sanitation services in rural Ecuador. Ecuador

increase the coverage of water and sanitation services in rural communities of up to 20,000 inhabitants, through a grant from the English Cooperation Fund for Water and Sanitation in Latin America and the Caribbean (FECASALC) amounting to $ 20 million and an IDB loan of 30 million.

Rural Infrastructure Program for Water and Sanitation (PIRSA) will install, expand and improve water systems and sanitation solutions provide low-income rural areas where these services are lacking or deficient. Will also finance a series of activities to strengthen the management capacity of communities, operators and local governments to deliver services. Additionally, we will strengthen the capacity of the central government agency responsible for these services, and regulatory business.

Governments local infrastructure projects implemented through funding agreements with the State Bank, the principal financial institution for development in Ecuador, under the supervision of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

The program reflects the intentions of the 2008 National Constitution of Ecuador and its Water and Sanitation Policy, which decentralized the provision of water and sanitation services and allowed local governments become responsible for these services.

The program in Ecuador is the eleventh project to improve and expand potable water coverage and sanitation conducted by the IDB and the English Fund, created in 2008 by initiative of the President of the English government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Spain and the Bank have collaborated in financing water and sanitation services through projects in Haiti, El Salvador, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Brazil and Uruguay. Under this alliance is also developing other projects in Honduras, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

BULLETIN No. 021