Beccar Varela Advises on the Launch of the First Argentine Social Impact Bond
December, 2018 - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Buenos Aires, December 19th, 2018. On October 25th, the Government of the City of Buenos Aires (GCBA), together with the social investors group formed by Banco Ciudad, Banco Galicia, IDB FOMIN, IRSA, Organización Román and a private investor, launched Argentina’s first Social Impact Bond (SIB) that will aim to finance the program “Proyectá tu futuro”. Beccar Varela, Acrux Partners, Social Finance UK and Fundación Alimentaris advised on the technical matters involved in the creation and launch of the SIB.
Social Impact Bonds are agreements between the State and private investors seeking to finance projects that provide solutions to social problems, carried out by expert organizations, generally from the third sector. The distinctive feature of this type of innovative initiative is that the State only pays for the concrete results obtained from the implementation of the project.
“Proyectá tu futuro” is a program designed by the Secretariat of Strategic Planning of the GCBA, officially presented on last Friday, December 14th, in an event that took place at the Government House of the city. It will contribute to the labor force insertion of approximately 1,000 vulnerable youth, between 17 and 24 years old, from the southern part of the city. The program will be implemented by AMIA, Forge Foundation, Pescar Foundation and Reciduca Foundation.
Beccar Varela participated in this project advising on the legal structuring of the BIS and its associated contracts. The team was led by Constanza Connolly, Fernanda Mierez and María Shakespeare, with the participation of Roberto Crouzel, Luciana Liefeldt and Lucía Degano (corporate), Pablo Torretta (regulatory), Juan Stupenengo and Gabriel Vernola (administrative) and Santiago Montezanti y Lujan Callaci (tax), and Evangelina Petrizza (corporate sustainability).
About Social Impact Bonds.
The mechanism emerged in the United Kingdom in 2010 with the name Social Impact Bond, where bond refers to the link that arises between different actors working towards the same objective. It is currently being used to address social problems in 22 countries. There are already more than 108 bonds in the implementation phase, representing an investment of approximately US$392 million.
