Almost a year ago this month, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) said goodbye to staff association president Isabel Larson, after 30 years’ loyal service. Staff and guests at a ceremony in the bank’s huge glass-roofed atrium included IDB president Enrique Iglesias and vice-president Nancy Birdsall, who in the past two years has conducted the biggest upheaval in the IDB’s 37-year history. Birdsall probably expected fond words and perhaps a few tears from Larson.
If so, Larson must have surprised her. “Before I conclude,” she said, “allow me to make a few personal remarks. This is my last act and I retire … with mixed feelings.” Along with many of her colleagues, she said, she was “not convinced by the results of the reorganization”. The changes had been “too traumatic”; the impact of them might have “profound and adverse consequences on the institution”. She expressed concern at the “balkanization … into small and powerful feuds, where agendas pursued are not necessarily those of the governors, the executive directors and the president of the bank”. She worried that “worldbankalization” of the IDB was growing, a development that could rob the “great Latin American institution” of its unique identity.
Nobody was in doubt about Larson’s target. No names were mentioned – the reference to “worldbankalization” was enough. Birdsall spent nearly 14 years as an economist at the World Bank, before making the leap to join the IDB as vice-president in 1993. There she pushed through a restructuring in just two years, creating new departments, abolishing others. It was dramatic – even so she says she cannot understand Larson’s attack. “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t agree with her point of view. I was quite surprised to hear her say this,” she says.
Yet Larson said publicly what others have whispered in private. As president of the staff association, her reference to a “large number of colleagues” thinking along similar lines carries weight. Her fears are echoed by former staff member Sebastião Vital. Once deputy finance minister of Brazil, and until November 1993 deputy manager at the bank, Vital left in sorrowful mood because he felt the IDB was going the wrong way. “I spoke to a colleague in the bank only a couple of weeks ago, ” he said, “That person said, ‘Sebastião, you won’t believe it, it is even worse’.”
In July an internal bank review, based on interviews with 63 of the banks’ most senior executives, pointed to the “climate of stress” at the IDB. “The bank’s products and service could be adversely affected unless the climate improved,” it noted.
Doing more with less
The IDB appears to be in great shape. Only seven years ago its relations with the US were in tatters, some on Capitol Hill even advocated closing it down. Few thought it could successfully negotiate a capital replenishment of $41 billion. But it did. In 1994, it managed to boost its capital to $101 billion. And its loans have never been higher. The average annual lending for the period 1985 to 1989 was $2.5 billion. Today the IDB can lend up to $7.2 billion a year. The confidence of the non-regional shareholders has never been greater. “The capital replenishment was a huge achievement by president Iglesias,” says one staff member. “The last replenishment [the eighth] was path-breaking. In principle, we can lend from $6 billion to $7 billion a year without necessarily going back to shareholders for support every four years.”
‘Hemos hecho más, con menos [we have done more, with less]’ is the slogan being bandied around by Birdsall. “We are a bank that is growing,” she says. “By 1998, the portfolio of loans will be twice that of 1992.” Indeed, the portfolio has grown by about 10% a year since 1992. Birdsall also points to new activities: the IDB offers educational courses through its newly opened Inter-American Institute for Social Development and has sponsored high-profile conferences that have proved important forums for “intellectual leadership” in the region.
Administrative cost-cutting has accompanied expansion. The 1994 budget was equal, in real terms, to the 1993 budget; the 1995 budget was about 3% smaller, after taking inflation into account. This year, the budget is nominally larger but is still lagging inflation. “These budgets reflect our member governments’ determination to make our bank, as well as other multilateral and bilateral development institutions, as efficient as possible,” says Birdsall, adding that the budget grew by 40% between 1988 and 1993.
According to one long-serving bank executive this approach is letting the bank float along nicely. “You may have a ship sailing with a great deal of unhappiness in the crew, and people may think the first mate is a fool. But the ship itself has good direction. That’s better than when the crew is having parties all the time and the ship hits an iceberg.”
So what motivates this first mate, who upsets some staff with her worldbankalizing and impresses others with her efficiency?
By this August, Nancy Birdsall, 50, and a mother of three, will have been at the IDB for three years. She spent most of her career at the World Bank, and it’s probably true to say that no-one expected a revolution when she walked into the IDB’s luxurious Washington headquarters on New York Avenue and 13th Street. Yet it is clear she was intent on change from the start. A graduate of Newton College of the Sacred Heart, where she read American studies, she also has a Yale PhD in economics. Her work rate is reported to be hectic.
Birdsall’s promotion was a surprise. At the World Bank she had been director of the policy research department, managing 85 economists. She was one of 59 department directors working under 17 vice-presidents, six managing directors, and the president of the bank. At the IDB she is the sole vice-president, answerable only to the president, in a bank that has 1,798 staff. She speaks passable Portuguese and is learning Spanish.
When Birdsall arrived at the IDB, the post of vice-president had been vacant for seven months because the Clinton administration had problems filling it. Reportedly, the hottest candidate was Cuban-American lawyer Mario Baeza, whom Clinton had initially wanted to appoint as assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, the state department’s top Latin American post. This move, however, had been blocked by the Cuban-American lobby, which believed Baeza, a privatization lawyer, was insufficiently anti-Castro, having made a half-day investment trip to Cuba. Clinton suggested Baeza take the IDB vice-presidency as the next best option. But despite the vice-presidency’s not requiring congressional ratification – it is in the gift of the White House – Cuban-American pressure ensured that his candidacy was dropped.
Two others reportedly considered were Everett Santos, a senior IFC official, and Sally Sheldon, a former US ambassador, but neither materialized as a serious candidate. Birdsall’s name came up when her old boss, Larry Summers, ex-chief economist at the World Bank and now under-secretary for international affairs at the US treasury, put her forward when asked for suggestions by treasury secretary Lloyd Bentsen. Birdsall’s knowledge of development policy was arguably greater than that of most political appointees. She was thought suitable too, because she fitted in with the IDB’s emphasis on social sectors such as health and education; the bank’s shareholders had decided that 50% of all lending was to be to social sectors.
Beyond this, Birdsall was well-qualified. She has written more than 30 papers, including “Advancing health in developing countries” and “Brazil: A guide to teaching about Brazil for elementary school teachers”. In 1992 she was chairperson of the International Center for Research on Women.
Mexican save
Her first act at the bank made a few jaws drop: she blocked a loan to Mexico. For the previous 10 years the US had opposed science and technology loans, but had usually abstained from voting on the bank’s board when they came up for approval. Birdsall broke the precedent, rejecting the $150 million loan. Pedro Aspe, then Mexican finance minister, and author of the country’s economic turnround in the early 1990s, was soon exchanging words with the US treasury, asking whether or not the neighbours were allies. The loan was finally approved in December 1993.
“I raised some questions about this and many were resolved,” Birdsall says. “The Mexicans agreed that some aspects of the loan did not make sense, but we ended up making quite a healthy loan.” The money, she says, was aimed at improving performance evaluation of university faculties, and encouraging libraries and laboratories to promote research.
In 1994, she made another splash. Eager to get to a meeting at the World Bank, she walked out in the middle of a speech by Itamar Franco, then president of Brazil – an incident which has gone down in IDB folklore for its political insensitivity. The Brazilian press was furious.
Some colleagues at the IDB maintain that these two incidents typify her first two years, a period characterized by a management style that has been single-minded and abrupt. Some, indeed, feel her style is not conducive to open intellectual discussion since her own ideas are so strongly put. A senior staff member says: “She chairs meetings very badly. She talks too much and listens too little. I think she doesn’t feel there’s much intellectual power in the bank. We are a consensus organization where you have to brainstorm. But she likes the direct way.”
Unlike the World Bank, the IDB has been criticized for being too accommodating. As one source said, of the internal management: “You might have a white piece of paper. Someone may suggest that perhaps a spot of yellow in the corner might make it look better – before you know it, the piece of paper is multi-coloured.” Birdsall seems to run counter to this ethos. If she wants the paper white, it stays white. This kind of attitude has led some to worry that she does not have the unanimous support inside the IDB. The notion that there are any criticisms of her style appears to have “no resonances for her”, they say.
Some of the differences may be cultural. One IDB source said: “We are overshadowed by the World Bank here in Washington, and there is resentment towards that institution as a result.” Another added: “The World Bank is a very arrogant institution considering it has so many disasters on its hands. The attitude seems to be: ‘if the developing world would just do exactly what we say, everything would be OK’.”
Walls within walls
At IDB, a staff joke has it that there are two banks – inside the one building. There’s the BIAD – the Spanish abbreviation for Inter-American Development Bank – run by the president, Enrique Iglesias, and the BAD – standing for the Bank of American Development – run by Birdsall. Staff say things were different in the past. Antonio Ortiz Mena, president from 1971 to 1988, was very much “a god” in residence, acting as chief executive officer and working through powerful Latin department heads.
Iglesias does not want to play god. Previously Uruguay’s foreign minister – he initiated the GATT Uruguay round – he was also once head of ECLA (the UN economic commission for Latin America). Rather than a hands-on administrator, he is an international hand-shaker, a geopolitical strategist, who enjoys the confidence of Latin American leaders.
But recent changes at the bank have created acute tensions. Sources close to Iglesias say he is now finding it increasingly difficult to bridge the divide between the regional shareholder/borrowers and the US. And some Latin America governments are wondering whether they still have any influence over the direction the IDB is taking.
Birdsall is the sole operational chief executive. In that respect she’s different from the previous vice-president, James Conrow. Conrow was the US treasury’s assistant secretary for international affairs under Reagan, in which post he spent much time bashing international organizations like the IDB. Once at the bank, though, he quickly “went native”, developing a partnership with Iglesias.
Birdsall doesn’t see herself as out on a limb. “In general, the president is a brilliant strategic planner. I see my role as helping him enact his vision,” she says “It’s hard to imagine a person I would rather work for; he’s quick, he listens. From my point of view it’s been a happy experience.” Staff say the changes are subtle. For example, in the new year it was Birdsall, not Iglesias, who sent a four-page welcome-back memo, in English and Spanish, to all employees.
The idea that a reorganization was necessary stemmed from the findings of a task-force, named Tapoma, which acted as a management consultancy evaluating the IDB’s successes and failures. Most of its recommendations – made before Birdsall’s arrival – centred on improving the performance of the 26 country offices and their 490 staff. One recommendation stated that management should establish “clear lines of authority and accountability throughout the bank’s operations”. To that end, “there should be a review of the bank’s organization guided by the need for a stronger country focus”.
This was exactly the target of Birdsall’s reorganization. The operations department was split in three, and regional experts and economists were moved from separate departments into new, regional operations groups. The idea was to provide “one-stop shopping” for borrower countries. Previously, these had to deal with multiple departments for loans. Central departments were created to co-ordinate and give advice to the operations departments, without being empowered to block loans. All this was achieved with the loss of about 60 jobs.
Underweight in Brazilians
The reorganization also altered the top management layers. Until then, the president of the bank had always been a Latin American; the executive vice-president a US citizen; the head of operations a Brazilian; and the head of project analysis an Argentine. In the new division of spoils an Argentine was made head of the second regional department and a US official took over the third. Brazil voted against the changes, since under the new structure it would control only the first of the three regional departments and not the entire operations department. With 33% of the continent’s population, 45% of its poverty, and 34% of its GDP, the country carried a lot of weight, and the Brazilians refused to make an appointment. The bank had to settle on an internal appointment – Brazilian staffer Ricardo Santiago.
Birdsall acknowledges there was a problem: “Yes, the Brazilians voted against it on the board. But I think there’s been a good response in our work with the them. Their legitimate concerns are behind us and we continue to have an excellent relationship.”
But Sebastião Vital, a former IDB senior manager, says there has been a fundamental change in the attitude of Brazil towards the IDB: “Brazil is no longer the most important shareholder. Nowadays we are borrowers not shareholders.” By alienating large Latin American countries, the regional nature of the institution is being sacrificed to other goals, he believes. The advice given by the IDB is not being heeded with the same respect.
It wasn’t just Brazil that objected. Many other governments had serious misgivings. The bank governor representing Belgium said at 1995’s annual general meeting in Jerusalem: “The creation of new departments and the regionalization of the operative departments seem, at first sight, to have established a structure that is too cumbersome. I am not convinced that such a widespread reorganization was necessary.”
The Americans, however, are happy. US board director Ronald Scheman says: “From the US point of view the reorganization has been an enormous success. The bank is far more responsive to borrowers, and it processes loans far faster. Witness the rapid response in the Mexico and Argentina loans [for balance of payments support during the ‘Tequila’ crisis]. These took less than six months. An average loan would take one to two years.”
Another senior IDB figure believes the goals were right, creating a vertical structure in which managers could have more individual power and be more accountable: “Historically, there has been a culture of avoiding responsibility in this bank. A number of people had to sign off on a loan, and people were travelling all the time. If everyone works as a team it can produce a high-quality loan document, but that diffuses accountability. If something goes wrong who is to blame?”
Birdsall says: “The most important thing about the reorganization is that it has improved our ability to serve our clients. We’re more country-focused and we know from many of our governors and our counterparts in the borrowing countries that we’re able to be more responsive to their needs.” Managers, she adds, have been given the “authority to take decisions quickly”.
She explains the management situation in these enigmatic terms: “There are more people with the title [of manager] at a certain level of manager, but the total number of managers and the total cost of managers at the various levels is the same or lower.” This is a puzzling interpretation. In the old structure there were 10 managers, three senior deputy managers, 22 deputy managers and 41 division chiefs. Presently there are 15 managers, three senior deputy managers, 22 deputy managers, and 48 division chiefs. So, in fact, there appear to be more managers.
One critic says: “I thought the reorganization was unnecessary. Nothing was broken and nothing needed fixing. Nothing has improved and the transition costs have been high.” Another said: “I have a slight bias in favour of the old structure. Now we have eight departments where before we had four. So there is more potential for overlap.”
Interviews with 63 senior bank executives, in the IDB’s own internal review, gave some interesting results. Only 41% considered co-ordination between the newly created regional departments to be “adequate”. Some – but only 43% of survey respondents – said that the quality of the bank’s work is better. And 70.9% said the regional and central departments did not work together adequately to produce the best possible output, in the most efficient way.
In spite of all these concerns, 67.6% of the respondents said the 1994 reorganization had, or would, improve the bank’s effectiveness. “Were the benefits worth the costs? I think so,” says Birdsall. “The staff had a lot of energy unleashed.”
Bouleversement Haussmann
However, critics think the vertical management structure means power rests in one place alone, the top. In the IDB’s organization chart, the office of chief economist – a new post similar to that in the World Bank – is conspicuously wedged between the vice-president and the other departments. This job, one of intellectual leadership, is held by Birdsall’s recruit, Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, famously remembered for going on TV to confirm the go-ahead of an austerity economic programme, despite widespread riots opposing it. (For his political faux pas he was dismissed the next morning).
Since being at the IDB, Hausmann has come through another gaffe. Less than 48 hours after the Mexican bail-out, when secretary of the treasury Robert Rubin announced that the financial package would be disbursed only in tranches, Hausmann publicly criticized the cautious measure through Reuters. He labelled Rubin’s approach “a dangerous idea”. The IDB’s board of directors told him this sort of behaviour was unacceptable.
The 1996 IDB Economic and Social Progress Report – described as the benchmark of the bank’s research – was equally controversial. Hausmann wrote on the subject of volatility, concluding that this factor was costing the Latin American region 1% a year in economic growth. The report was published well over a month late – too late for the October 1995 IMF-World Bank meetings. The normally tight-lipped IDB external relations department spoke of “vigorous discussion” within the bank, and when pressed conceded: “Some economists may not have agreed with it. It’s not your normal economic analysis and new methods are sometimes hard to digest. This brought together a lot of data that would not normally be used.”
Many people at the IDB were so embarrassed by the report because of its allegedly poor intellectual level that extraordinary measures were taken to suppress it. The president convened a meeting, reputedly shocked that Hausmann’s report had gone straight to the management committee without the normal internal discussions.
Iglesias’s intervention forced Hausmann to produce a 14- point defence. But in spite of the furore, the “volatility” paper was used and in February was even published as a book. Birdsall thought the report excellent: “It was very creative, and an important contribution to a whole line of thinking.” As to the furore, she would be “disappointed if there were never any controversy”.
Baltimore re-education
The embarrassing rebellion against Hausmann’s report by the IDB economists brought a comeback. At the end of January, the 80 or so economists were brought together in Baltimore for a “strengthening exercise”. At the two-day meeting the establishment of a new triumvirate was announced. It consists of Hausmann; his deputy, Liliana Rojas-Suarez, who came from the IMF; and the head of operations department three, the American Ciro de Falco (previously at the US treasury). The body is geared to making recommendations on senior economists’ promotions. It has already been dubbed “the commissariat” for its potentially damaging impact on the free flow of ideas and criticism from the bank’s economists.
“There is an analogy round here to a terrorist regime,” says one disturbed senior executive. “The party is trying to train commissars to talk the same speech.” But this executive is a member of the old guard, and, in fact, any conflicts in the bank are likely to be eliminated – if only by the process of retirement, and the selective renewal of three-year contracts.
The turnover of staff has been large. Various people have been brought in: Miguel Martinez, an Argentine, left the World Bank to head the second regional operations department. According to estimates by bank insiders, almost 60% of the staff were not working at the bank five years ago. A senior source estimated that consultancy expenditures had risen 60% in the past two years.
By grasping the issue of costs early on, Birdsall took on the “star culture” of expensive technical experts on the IDB’S payroll and substituted freelance consultants as and when required. Her emphasis on costs is derided by those who favour the old system and point out that administrative expenses, as a proportion of costs, have consistently been between 7% and 8% in recent years, falling from a peak of 18% in 1981. They point to a more sinister motive: “worldbankalization” of the IDB.
“We brought together the best experts Latin America had,” says one rueful bank executive. “For example, if you wanted to do something in sanitation there was a guy from Guatemala, Umberto Olivero, who was the most respected in the region. There are very few of these people now. To bring down costs we brought in cheap, young people, like those from the World Bank.”
Also gone, according to this long-serving staffer, are “the best electrical engineer the bank ever had”, a fisheries expert who used a couple of patents on net designs to set up his own business, and an agriculture specialist who became a consultant to the World Bank, where, as he put it, he can make his retirement money. The death of institutional memory, says this employee, is only a matter of time. One staff member recalled that Oscar Rodriguez Rozic, a senior staffer, would probably write a history based on his 25 years at the bank – but in trying to trace him found the internal directory did not show his name. “He’s already gone … at least on paper.”
The shareholders’ call for a new emphasis on social sectors, has, however, made way for a skills revitalization programme. Birdsall explains: “It’s basically training in order to re-allocate people who have in-house expertise. Some of them have already switched, for example from agriculture in to social programmes. The scheme can also be used to finance any staff who decide to leave.”
Wall Street invaders
The new way and the old way are most starkly seen in the newly created private sector department established as part of the bank’s new mandate to encourage private investment in infrastructure. In 1995, five loans totalling $146 million were approved, representing total project values of $1 billion. The first loan, carried out in conjunction with the IFC, for a power station in Honduras, is complete, and has increased electricity output by 15%. A decision has been made to allocate up to 5% of the bank’s total commitments to projects that bring in private capital. All of which sounds like good news.
But with half the 15-strong department appointed internally, and the remainder from Wall Street, the mix of staff could be a recipe for disaster. The department, headed by Makoto Sunagawa, previously head of Jeximbank in the US, is split into three regions, which has led to poor communication and a jealous guarding of regional information. Worse still, those inside the department refuse to talk to the operational people in the IDB proper, and vice-versa. The private sector department – viewed by some as the enemy within – dreams of one day disbursing 25% of bank funds.
The first three loans were made with the IFC, the World Bank organization on which the department is modelled. It worked well enough until the non-Wall Street contingent found the idea of sending memos for help to the IFC a little demeaning. The policy of “learning how to do it” from the IFC was sabotaged at board level. The argument was that if the IDB worked with the IFC, the bank would not bring in sufficient private sector funds. The word “additionality” was coined to describe the need to add value, and not work with the IFC.
Conversely, the project-finance expertise of the IDB is largely a hindrance in this department. “They have not yet graduated to the concept of financial rate of return,” laments a banker who worked on the deals. More precedence is given to environmental issues and the economic rate of return – meaning infrastructure deals as the IDB has always done them. An example is the Argentine toll road project under consideration. The road, outside Buenos Aires, is nearly complete, and the IDB may provide the final funds with its co-arranger, ING Bank. However, this deal is riddled with problems – not least that there is no clear concession agreement for the operator. Some in the department advocated not touching such a “sloppy project”. In spite of all the concerns, the old mentality asserted itself. “Never forget we are a public-sector bank”, one banker was told by senior colleagues.
At the other extreme, the bank’s directors are concerned about some of the loans being made in the new social areas. For a start, what constitutes a social loan and what does not is debatable. Even more worrying is the difficulty of disbursing the loans. By contrast, building dams was a lot easier.
The health-sector loan to Guatemala is frequently cited by those who lament the direction the bank is taking. This loan was approved last year by a hesitant board, with more than $1 million spent on consultants’ studies, although the loan was just $50 million. Guatemala has the worst health indicators in the Latin America region, and problems rest predominantly in the mountains, the home of the Mayan Indians. The Indians have no basic health services. The loan was originally intended to provide vaccinations, instructions in basic hygiene and nutritional help. But later, following negotiations between the Guatemalan government and the IDB, it was decided that the loan would go straight to Guatemala’s central bank, disbursed against conditional promises that the Latin American government would increase its healthcare budget and use consultants to reform the health ministry. As one critic put it: “Given what we know about Guatemalan national statistics, what the hell does that mean? Who will audit it?” Meanwhile, Birdsall says it is too soon to tell what will happen with this loan.
Education loans have been the most difficult to organize. The IDB contributed $80 million to an education loan for Bolivia, devised and additionally financed by the World Bank, which ran into problems because the standardized nature of the loan document – which makes it faster to approve – was found to be unsuitable; the principal condition was that the central government would provide money for the municipalities to invest in educational infrastructure, but not the funds for teachers’ salaries. This decentralization would leave the municipalities to find the money for the teachers’ payroll, which seemed a good way of rapidly expanding education.
The loan was approved on November 16 1994, but has still to be disbursed. In the meantime, the country is paying a commitment fee.
Staff at the IDB believe the loan has so far failed because the Bolivian municipalities cannot raise sufficient taxes to pay teachers’ wages. There was a teachers’ strike against the loan, too, that the government attempted to quell to prove its development credentials. Only the intervention of the church prevented the government imprisoning the leaders of the teachers’ union.
This year, the IDB plans to disburse $4 million of the Bolivia loan to rural areas. Birdsall says that the loan is a long-term project: “The government of Bolivia has taken the lead in a process called participation that devolves [power] to the regions. I think the bank is supporting important efforts on the part of the government.”
An educational loan to Peru has also been stalled. Here the main sticking point after two-and-a-half years’ negotiation is a refusal by the country’s government to privatize primary education – an idea emanating from one of Birdsall’s ex-World Bank assistants who believes the introduction of competition in primary schooling would be a good thing.
Critics point to this project as an example of great ideas in Washington being invented by people who have great US education – but no real appreciation of local conditions. Rather than have a bank staffed with people educated in Latin America who have direct experience of working in the region, the bank – in the eyes of the older hands – is becoming filled with theoretically minded types committed to certain types of development policy, bred in US universities. They are nicknamed the “young Americans born in Mexico”. The junior professionals’ programme, which trains young people from the bank’s member countries, has just been revived, and is cited as evidence of this. Out of 237 applicants, five recent graduates were chosen: a Haitian (Universities of Maryland and Michigan), an Argentine (University of Illinois ), a Peruvian (Duke University), a Japanese (University of Pennsylvania PhD) and a Colombian (Wellesley College and Harvard).
Worlds apart?
Birdsall readily admits that the bank’s new structure partly parallels that of the World Bank: “With our reorganization we mirror not exactly, but more closely, the country departments in the World Bank.”
But that is the crux of the problem. As Birdsall steers the IDB ever more faithfully along World Bank lines, the bank, taking on and enjoying the mantle of a powerful global finance house, is losing its central purpose – that of funding development. Quite apart from the groans of the old guard being shaken up – and even shaken out – disenchanted staff, say the critics, have legitimate reason to be wary of the changes that are altering the ethos of the organization. Bit by bit, it seems, a bank that had good regional contacts and which maintained a dialogue with its lender countries, is becoming a centralized monolith where the talk is of borrowers rather than shareholders, and where social loans are openly seen as a leg-up to a country’s balance of payments. The IDB’S equity may be 50% owned by Caribbean and Latin American nations, but many borrowers feel they are losing ownership of the bank.
Will Birdsall survive her own changes with such discontent raging within? The answer probably doesn’t lies with her disaffected staff, but with the member countries – the IDB’s shareholders and customers.
