Lab-IA — Bolivia's Ministry of Economy AI Laboratory for Macroeconomic Nowcasting

In July 2024, the Inter-American Development Bank approved a US$100,000 technical-cooperation grant (BO-T1444) to help Bolivia's Ministry of Economy and Public Finance (MEFP) launch 'Lab-IA,' an artificial-intelligence laboratory intended to build machine-learning capacity for macroeconomic analysis and, per the project's stated objective, 'the generation of knowledge and intelligent fiscal policies.'

Through a joint MEFP-IDB research outlet, the Cuadernos de Investigación Económica Boliviana (CIEB), the ministry has published concrete machine-learning research on its own domain. A peer-reviewed study, 'GDP nowcasting: A machine learning and remote sensing data-based approach for Bolivia' (Latin American Journal of Central Banking and Auditing, March 2024), reports narrowing Bolivia's official GDP data-release lag from around six months to about two months by combining machine-learning models with satellite-derived economic indicators alongside traditional statistics.

In March 2025, MEFP and the IDB jointly issued an open call inviting researchers in Bolivia and abroad to submit further machine-learning studies on policy formulation for emerging economies — covering pattern detection in large datasets, NLP-based economic-sentiment analysis, shock detection, and ML applications to social-policy targeting — with cash prizes and guaranteed publication in CIEB, reported independently by Bolivian outlets El Diario and La Razón.

This is the earliest-stage and smallest of the practices in this batch: a US$100,000 capacity-building grant producing genuine published research outputs, not yet a documented input into an actual budget or fiscal-policy decision. Independent Bolivian press coverage notes the country ranked 18th of 19 economies on CEPAL's 2025 Latin American AI Adoption Index (ILIA) — Lab-IA is a nascent effort in a country still near the back of the region's AI-adoption pack, included here as an honest early-stage case rather than a mature success story.

Read the full analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666143824000085