News

UNI Americas Finance launch the Latin American Alliance to Defend Public Banks in a meeting that took place, in the city of Buenos Aires, on 25th and 26th of November, at the La Bancaria´s office. The event was attended by 31 union leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.

The meeting release a paper in order to define the role of Public Banks and the premises of having a financial system that focuses on the development and distribution of income based on work relations.

The document consider that Public Banks play a strategic role in promoting economic and social development in the region, and promote credit to sectors  that are in deep situation of disadvantaged, both economic and socially. These banks also foster production, employment and housing; provide support for Micro, Small and Medium companies; promote foreign trade, industry, agribusiness, family farming, regional economies and better development of cities and towns.

In addition to this, they promote government investment in infrastructure, development of technology and logistics, and contribute to social justice and job creation through low-cost loans made available to the poorest sectors of the population. Public Banks are present in places where there are no private banks, thus promoting financial inclusion and giving access to banking and financial services to the people.

Public Banks are important for counter-cyclical economic policies, essential in times of crisis, as this is when public bank operations increase. As a final consideration, Public Banks have an important strategic role to avoid the monopoly of financial activities that would incur abuses by the private sector becoming a regulator of the private market’s "flaws".

An important premise of a financial system that focuses on economic development and social promotion is having effective instruments of democratic control over the financial system, and the possibility of guiding credit and interest regulations towards priority sectors.

The concept of the Latin American Alliance to Defend Public Banks is that the countries’ laws and regulations must assure the resources for public banks, and that the members of the Governing Boards must include representatives elected by the workers, and others of the organised civil society. The Alliance also rejects outsourcing of services by institutions, so that private companies’ interests do not prevail in the internal activities of these banks. Additionally, public banks must be State instruments for implementing public policies for economic development and social promotion.

For the newly created Latin American Alliance to Defend Public Banks, the State and the public banks should ensure the necessary incentives for local, regional and national economic and social development and access to basic financial services, which are important elements that show that public banks have a strategic role to play in society, and can be an engine of economic growth and income distribution in the countries where they operate.

Moreover, the Alliance also considers that establishing mechanisms and social control, strong regulations and supervision of financial markets can ensure a strong and healthy financial system accessible to all, and help design stable national economies with the capacity of sustainable economic growth.

For the reasons above, the Alliance aims to defend these banks’ workers and the interests of society towards a framework for fair and equal social development.

Public Banks also have a powerful opposition. Hence such banks need to be actively defended.

Supporting and defending are core functions of the Latin American Alliance to Defend  Public Banks, whose creation led by UNI Americas Finance will give the unions and their workers an important and strategic supranational organisation framework for the entire region to defend employment, workers' rights and the rights of the people, economic development, social development and social justice.

The meeting also approved a solidarity motion for Banco de la Nación de Perú  where there are serious attacks on workers and attempts to privatize.