November 20 to December 3, 2023.
World Bank and kin head for a $100 bln cash call
"The World Bank and its fellow institutions are heading for a cash call. Scaling up the Washington-based lender and other multilateral development banks can provide valuable geopolitical clout and will help in the fight against climate change. The first step is to sweat their existing balance sheets harder. But eventually shareholders, including the United States, will have to overcome domestic political hurdles to put up $100 billion of extra capital."
How the World Bank’s new boss is navigating a clash over climate change
"The answer, said Banga, is private capital. The World Bank has financial tools — such as political risk insurance or concessionary loans — to pry loose money from the private sector. It also has the clout to remove barriers that hinder private investment in developing countries, and named 15 top executives and economists in July to do that through the Private Sector Investment Lab."
Rethinking Climate Finance: MDBs and Private Sector Mobilisation
"Co-hosted by EBRD and IDB Invest and joined by private sector investors ILX Management and CDPQ, the event explores how MDBs are innovating towards climate finance and how these innovations are perceived by stakeholders as effective conduits for climate investments. The panel will analyse their approach towards climate finance in emerging markets and developing economies as they aim to significantly increase climate finance."
Strengthening multilateral development banks: A response to critics
"We believe the best way to guard against this risk is to build as large a coalition as possible to advocate for change amongst shareholders, MDB management and staff, borrowing governments, and other development and climate stakeholders. To that end, we take seriously all commentary on the report. In the spirit of advancing the dialog, we offer the following reactions to criticisms we have heard."
Making development finance work in an era of climate emergency
"Pepukaye Bardouille, who comes from the climate-vulnerable Caribbean island nation of Dominica, is director of the Bridgetown Initiative unit of the Barbados government. She joined Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar on the Climate + podcast to discuss how to make development finance institutions fit for purpose and why the availability of cheaper, longer-term financing is critical for addressing climate change."
Lack of incentivisation halting transition finance progress
"To fund the innovation and infrastructure required to achieve a sustainable economy, an additional $126tn in transition finance will be needed globally from now until 2050. Asset owners are a key link in mobilising this capital. Voluntary carbon markets must be established, private capital moved at scale and multilateral development banks must work together to release more capital for climate action. OMFIF and SGX Group brought together asset owners, insurers, asset managers, multilateral development banks and standard setters to discuss these issues at the Global transition finance summit in Singapore."
November 20 to 26, 2023.
The three changes we need to improve understanding of private capital mobilisation
"Why does mobilisation matter? Here, we first take a look at what the IEG said about private sector mobilisation, before outlining three changes that are needed if we are to better understand the mobilisation of private capital and ultimately drive changes that will result in its growth. In short, we need a workable definition and estimate of catalysed private capital, reforms to how mobilisation is conceived and measured, and increased transparency of mobilisation data."
Climate Finance to Be Front and Center at COP28
"For years, multilateral development banks (MDBs), led by the World Bank, have struggled to align their approach to supporting economic and social progress with climate priorities. This struggle reached a crescendo in 2023 with the appointment of a new World Bank president, Ajay Banga, after his predecessor garnered criticism for appearing to doubt the reality of climate change. Numerous stakeholders—from key governments to civil society development and environmental advocates—have called for reform of the MDBs to enable them to be more effective in mobilizing climate finance for emerging economies."
World Bank's proposed inequality indicator too weak, experts warn
"The world's widening inequality hasn't always been front and center for the World Bank. A new effort is trying to change that."
November 13 to 19, 2023.
READOUT: Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen’s Bilateral Meetings with People’s Republic of China Vice Premier He Lifeng in San Francisco, California
"Committed to work together on shared challenges, including economic growth and financial stability and regulatory issues. They also committed to work together on climate change related economic issues and on debt issues in low-income and emerging economies. Both countries also committed to strengthening the international financial architecture. This includes a meaningful quota increase and steps to increase the voice of under-represented members/regions including through a new quota formula at the International Monetary Fund and the acceleration of efforts to evolve the Multilateral Development Banks to become better, bigger, and more effective."
COP28: a year on from climate change funding breakthrough, poor countries eye disappointment at Dubai summit
"The US is the biggest shareholder in the World Bank and traditionally, the bank’s president has been a US citizen nominated by Washington. Small-island developing states (among the most vulnerable to climate change due to sea-level rise) have argued for moving the fund away from a donor-recipient model, with all their usual power imbalances, towards a partnership founded on a shared commitment to protecting the planet. This will require partial or total reform of the World Bank – and some argue this is already happening under its new president. But hosting the fund within the bank would still give donor countries disproportionate influence, despite recommendations by the transitional committee that the fund’s governing board be composed of a majority of developing country members."
What World Bank reforms mean for its watchdog
"The 30-year-old Inspection Panel will need to adapt to the bank's new focus on climate, experts say."
UNCTAD urges the global financial system to address pressing development and climate finance needs of least developed countries
"The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) emphasized today the imperative for international financial reforms to specifically target the financing requirements of the world's 46 least developed countries (LDCs). According to UNCTAD’s Least Developed Countries Report 2023, fiscal constraints in LDCs pose a severe threat to their ability to implement crucial development policies, potentially derailing progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a low-carbon transition. UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan said “The success of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is inextricably linked to the progress of these nations,” adding that time is running out for LDCs to achieve the SDGs."
November 6 to 12, 2023.
World Bank eyes speeding up loan approvals amid bold overhaul
"The World Bank aims to speed up the disbursement of loans by one third in as little as two years, a key pillar of an overhaul that aims to make the development organization more effective. "We did not pin an exact date, but we will be looking to reduce by a third over perhaps a couple of years," said Ed Mountfield, Vice President for Operations Policy and Country Services at the World Bank, in an interview with Reuters in London."
Yellen supports 'significant' capital increase for IDB's private sector arm
"U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday said the United States will work closely with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to better integrate supply chains in Latin America and the Caribbean as Washington works to counter China's growing influence. Yellen, who hosted a breakfast for leaders from the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity before a White House summit, said Treasury strongly supported efforts by IDB President Ilan Goldfajn to reform the regional development bank's private sector arm, IDB Invest, and backed a capital increase for it."
October 30 to November 5, 2023.
Fixing Global Economic Governance
"To address climate change and the rest of the Sustainable Development Agenda, we must do more to enhance emerging markets’ and developing countries’ revenues, so that they can make the necessary investments. As matters stand, however, international trade and financial arrangements are overwhelmingly arrayed against this goal."
In times of polycrises, multilateral development banks must do more and act faster
"Multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the Asian Development Bank, of which I am president, must do more and act faster to overcome these crises and help people while there is still time. Business as usual isn’t an option, especially in Asia and the Pacific, where nearly 70 million people have fallen back into extreme poverty since the pandemic and which accounts for more than half of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. We need bold action to deliver the estimated US$3-trillion needed annually by 2030, according to the G20, to tackle global challenges and revive progress on the Sustainable Development Goals."
The World Bank can bring the world’s poor into the clean energy revolution
"That requires global coordination, and Ahmed thinks the Bank is the right group to lead the charge. He imagines a world where vast projects, like solar farms across the Sahara Desert that feed into electrical grids from Europe to central Africa, are shepherded to completion by the World Bank, coordinating the potentially dozens of countries that would need to participate, help fund, and build out the ideas. Ahmed and I spoke in early October about what the World Bank is doing now to fight global warming, and what it could be doing differently and better. A transcript edited for length and clarity follows."
Development Futures: Reforming the Multilateral Development Banks
"In this episode of Development Futures, Alexandre Dayant speaks with Clemence Landers, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. Together, they discuss ongoing reform efforts, explore innovative solutions to maximise the impact of MDBs, and analyse the implications of the US–China competition within the reform landscape. What steps can MDBs take to optimise their financial resources, and how can they navigate the potential trade-offs between climate and development financing? These are just a few of the questions covered in this wide-ranging discussion."
The World Bank Eyes an Overhaul Amid the Climate Crisis
"The Marrakech meetings underscored the imperative of bringing global economic governance into greater balance with ecological imperatives by embracing new, green approaches to global development that can command support from rich and poor countries alike. As Financial Times columnist and editor Martin Wolf observed, a “massive” and “frightening” chasm has opened up between today’s planetary crisis and the antiquated institutions of international cooperation we have inherited. In defiance of all rationality, he continued, humanity seems prepared to commit collective suicide, simply because it cannot figure out how to harness the world’s extraordinary wealth to accelerate clean development in the “Global South.” We cannot afford North-South acrimony if we wish to survive the climate emergency, agreed the IMF managing director, Georgieva. “We need to move from a culture of pointing fingers to the culture of holding hands. We are all in this together.""
The IFC’s new approach to international development
"Makhtar Diop, managing director of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, speaks about the implications of the recent partnership agreement signed with other multilateral development banks."
MDBs should be sensitive about the price of hybrid capital
"Under pressure from shareholders, multilateral development banks are exploring innovative solutions to boost their lending firepower to emerging markets for sustainable development. This includes the use of hybrid capital, which will allow MDBs to lend more without impacting their triple-A credit ratings due to these securities being treated as equity by credit rating agencies. However, being subordinated in the capital structure, MDBs will have to pay significantly more for hybrid bonds over what they pay for conventional funding."
What has a year of ‘global financial architecture reform’ actually achieved?
"Nevertheless, the reforms and momentum to date should not be written off - far from it. Much of the global financial architecture has been in place since the end of the Second World War, and it was always going to take a significant amount of time and energy to reform it. Moreover, recapitalisation is not totally off the cards: major shareholders simply want to maximise the World Bank’s lending ability to its current full potential first (Yellen ruled out recapitalisation “at this time”).
Comment: Investors should tap renewed momentum for climate finance in developing nations
"Both investors and governments recognise that achieving global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 requires involving developing countries in the clean economy transition. Despite their minimal carbon emissions, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations bear the brunt of climate damage. Now, after years of deadlock over funding climate efforts in these nations and unfulfilled financial pledges from wealthy countries, there's a fresh resolve among governments, multilateral banks and investors to contribute to solutions."
October 23 to 29, 2023.
In times of polycrises, multilateral development banks must do more and act faster
"Multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the Asian Development Bank, of which I am president, must do more and act faster to overcome these crises and help people while there is still time. Business as usual isn’t an option, especially in Asia and the Pacific, where nearly 70 million people have fallen back into extreme poverty since the pandemic and which accounts for more than half of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. We need bold action to deliver the estimated US$3-trillion needed annually by 2030, according to the G20, to tackle global challenges and revive progress on the Sustainable Development Goals."
What has a year of ‘global financial architecture reform’ actually achieved?
"Nevertheless, the reforms and momentum to date should not be written off - far from it. Much of the global financial architecture has been in place since the end of the Second World War, and it was always going to take a significant amount of time and energy to reform it. Moreover, recapitalisation is not totally off the cards: major shareholders simply want to maximise the World Bank’s lending ability to its current full potential first (Yellen ruled out recapitalisation “at this time”).
Comment: Investors should tap renewed momentum for climate finance in developing nations
"Both investors and governments recognise that achieving global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 requires involving developing countries in the clean economy transition. Despite their minimal carbon emissions, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations bear the brunt of climate damage. Now, after years of deadlock over funding climate efforts in these nations and unfulfilled financial pledges from wealthy countries, there's a fresh resolve among governments, multilateral banks and investors to contribute to solutions."
How to finance a faster shift to a better world
"The world is on fire.” These are the opening words of the second volume of a report on strengthening the multilateral development banks commissioned by the G20 and released last week in Marrakech. The heat of 2023 makes that more than a purely figurative statement. We are living in an era of big challenges and an evident inability to meet them. The time left is also ever shorter."
G20 communiqué analysis Annual Meetings 2023: Nothing new under the sun
"The communiqué of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was released on 13 October and framed yet again by a challenging geopolitical and economic global context. It focused on the interlinked issues of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the urgency of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progressing with multilateral development banks (MDBs) reform, and addressing debt concerns. While the issues covered by the document are obviously relevant and important, those left unmentioned are significant: Recognition of a debt crisis, the need for debt relief and the establishment of an independent debt restructuring mechanism, special drawing rights allocations, successful completion of the IMF’s 16th quota review and commitments to meet overseas development and climate finance commitments, to mention perhaps the most prominent among them."
Devex Newswire: World Bank meetings go out with an inconclusive bang
"The World Bank-International Monetary Fund annual meetings ended with plenty of discord over the agreements that were clinched — with bank President Ajay Banga’s reforms garnering mixed reviews."
Devex Invested: The scorecard from Marrakech
“It leaves me with the question: ‘If not now then when?” Clemence Landers from the Center for Global Development told Devex. “What exactly needs to get better before the bank can get bigger and by when?’”
World Bank-IMF meetings: A start, but still a long way to go
"The broad consensus after last week’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings — held for the first time in Africa in 50 years — seemed to be that the bank is making a good start on a long and very hard journey."
IDB head’s big plan: Work with the World Bank, sweat the balance sheet
"Under President Ajay Banga, the World Bank is making a renewed push to get multilateral development banks to cooperate, not compete, with each other. For Ilan Goldfajn, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, that means being practical and not over-promising what can’t be delivered."
Annual Meetings 2023: Investing in People for a Livable Planet
"With chronic instability, war, continued climate disasters and a fledgling pandemic recovery, the World Bank Group committed at the 2023 Annual Meetings in Marrakech, Morocco to evolve and rise to the challenges with a new mission: eradicate poverty on a livable planet. During his plenary speech before World Bank governors the president outlined the new mission including a central emphasis on women, youth and jobs. He described plans for the institution to increase its financial capacity and refocus on confronting challenges “not just as a funding mechanism but as a knowledge mechanism.”
EIB 'must strengthen' global path so EU looks outward, says Hoyer
"The European Investment Bank must continue to develop operations and partnerships outside the European Union, the bank's president Werner Hoyer told GlobalMarkets at what will be his last IMF-World Bank annual meetings in the role, as his term ends next year."
October 16 to 22, 2023.
The World Bank's Bold New Vision
"To create a world free of poverty – on a livable planet.” This vision and mission will test the sincerity of our ambition – it sets us on a journey that will require reimagined partnerships, a new way of working and thinking, an innovative plan to scale and replicate, additional resources, and optimism for what could be possible."
Key takeaways from IMF/World Bank meetings in Morocco
"The International Monetary Fund and World Bank wrapped up annual meetings in Morocco on Sunday with some progress towards increasing their lending resources but confronting a new economic shock from the Israel-Gaza conflict. Discussions in the tourist hub of Marrakech, not far from the epicenter of a devastating September earthquake, focused on a flagging global economy weighed down by debt, inflation and conflict, a growing wealth gap between rich and poor countries and floundering efforts to tackle climate change."
World Bank, multilateral development banks jointly seek to boost lending power
"The World Bank on Friday said it is bolstering collaboration with nine multilateral development banks (MDBs) to accelerate its vision of a liveable planet free of poverty. It said measures already being implemented or under consideration by the MDBs could yield $300 billion to $400 billion of additional lending capacity to help developing countries confront "a perfect storm of intertwined crises — from climate shocks and conflicts to pandemics and surging debt."
Fourth G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) Meeting on 12-13 October 2023 culminates in Marrakech, Morocco
"Members discussed the priority of strengthening Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to address the global challenges of the 21st century and the report of the G20 Independent Expert Group (IEG). The IEG submitted Volume 2 of their Report, Volume 1 of which was submitted prior to the meeting at Gandhinagar in July 2023."
Statement of the Heads of Multilateral Development Banks Group: Strengthening Our Collaboration for Greater Impact
"We take this vote of confidence with high responsibility, stepping up our individual and collective actions. To rise to the challenge, we reiterate our commitment to make critical reforms to strengthen our financing capacity, to increase the speed and agility of our operations, and to improve the way we work together to maximize our impact as a system. As we conclude our discussions in Marrakech, we agree to strengthen our collaboration in the following five critical areas."
Multilateral development banks, keen to expand lending, to meet with ratings agencies
"Senior executives at multilateral development banks will meet on Wednesday with the top credit ratings agencies, bank executives said, amid a broad push to expand their lending capacity and help countries brace for climate change and other challenges. The closed-door meeting will address how to value callable capital - a commitment from shareholders to step in during extreme circumstances — in the banks' capital adequacy frameworks, Roberta Casali, vice president for risk at the Asian Development Bank, told a Rockefeller Foundation event on Tuesday. It will be the fourth such meeting this year, she said."
Banga vows to improve World Bank before asking for a capital increase
"Ajay Banga promised to deliver a “better bank,” before asking shareholders for a “bigger bank,” the World Bank’s new president said during a press conference to kick off the annual meetings in Morocco. Banga stayed on message during his opening remarks on Tuesday, hammering home the same points he made during interviews leading up to the World Bank-International Monetary Fund gathering in Marrakech."
Exclusive: IDB chief says lending could reach $112 bln with private arm
"Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) President Ilan Goldfajn said the financial institution can expand its lending capacity to as much as $112 billion over a decade once it secures fresh capital from shareholders for its private arm. A plan to increase capital by IDB Invest - the lender's private sector arm - is set to be ratified at the bank's annual meeting in March, Goldfajn told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Bank/IMF meetings in Marrakech on Wednesday."
Gates Foundation chief: US is a ‘stumbling block’ in development finance
"As development officials increase their focus on pushing emerging market economies to contribute more to development and climate finance, Suzman’s warning is a reminder that the US needs to put its money where its mouth is. Washington has in recent years pushed for the World Bank’s balance sheet to “work harder”, for example by allowing shareholders to guarantee loans or invest in bonds, rather than increasing its funding. But this was no replacement for increasing direct financing, Suzman said."
October 9 to 15, 2023.
World Bank's Banga faces pressure on resources, shareholder schisms
"World Bank President Ajay Banga will come under pressure this week to focus on climate change, but the former Mastercard CEO first needs to get shareholders in line on how to grow the bank. Banga, just 130 days into the job, has a mandate to broaden the multilateral development lender's mission to tackle global crises including climate change, pandemics and fragile states."
Progress in reforming development banks 'quite limited,' new tool shows
"A new tool launched on Monday to track reforms by the World Bank and the five biggest multilateral development banks (MDBs) shows that broad changes are "firmly in play" but progress in implementing them has been limited thus far. Senior officials at the nonpartisan Center for Global Development said they developed the new platform to assess progress being made on reforms, but concluded progress in implementing the changes was "quite limited."
US Treasury pushing development banks for progress on next phase of reforms by April
"The U.S. Treasury Department is pushing the World Bank and regional multilateral development banks to complete work on new rules for leveraging shareholder capital commitments to boost lending capacity by April 2024, a senior Treasury official said. Giving more value to callable capital -- commitments by shareholders to supply additional resources in the event of severe financial problems -- in the bank's balance sheets could unlock "significantly more financing" for developing countries, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly."
World Bank explores expanding loan guarantees for private financing
"The World Bank on Monday said it is looking at ways to expand the guarantees it provides for commercial loans to boost the private financing available to developing countries. Some emerging economies have been unable to tap international markets as global interest rates soar and with uncertainty about when the U.S. Federal Reserve will reach the end of its current tightening cycle."
Readying the Multilateral Development Banks for the Climate Fight
"Different climate-financing challenges call for different financing methods, and when it comes to building resilience in the developing world, multilateral development banks must take the lead. But to be effective, they and their shareholders must remove the shackles that have been holding them back."
Yellen says World Bank needs 'cultural change' to better mobilize private capital
"U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday the World Bank had made progress in reforming its operations to better address climate change and other global challenges, but still needed "cultural change" to mobilize private sector capital. Yellen, speaking at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, Morocco, said the bank's governors would this week endorse a new vision "to end poverty on a livable planet" and that its new president, Ajay Banga, was working to turn that new mission into reality."
Opinion: Multilateral development banks must collaborate better
"As the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group kick off, here's how multilateral development banks can rewire to focus on collaboration."
Maximising the developmental value of MDB callable capital: Preliminary findings
"Callable capital is worth $1.2 trillion in nominal terms, but multilateral development bank (MDB) statutes are unclear on how it can be used, weakening its value. Several major shareholder governments could deploy substantial resources quickly to meet a capital call, although budgetary accounting needs clarifying. Credit rating agencies account for callable capital in divergent ways in part due to limited information from MDBs and shareholders. Preliminary evidence suggests that MDB tools and processes to face financial stress could be refined to further reduce financial risk and increase resilience. Stress tests illustrate the extraordinary financial strength of MDBs, even in the face of shocks many times greater than any experienced before."
Balancing ambitions and bridging divides at multilateral development banks
"The World Bank Evolution Roadmap will impact all multilateral development banks. Its success depends on the willingness of developed countries to bridge the gap with developing countries. This requires increasing voice and decision-making power of developing countries and heeding calls for a capital increase."
Finance Leaders: Our Systems Are Broken. You Can Act to Change That
"It is the most vulnerable people who shoulder the biggest impacts from this system breakdown. Ensuring our multilateral systems are fit to tackle these enormous challenges that disproportionately impact lower income countries is a critical moral and practical collective responsibility. Time is running short and modest incrementalism won’t be enough. Action to deliver on real change that prioritises people must start now. As you gather in Marrakesh, we, the undersigned, urge you to fast track progress on the following and to lay the foundation for a liveable, prosperous planet."
Assessing the Bretton Woods Institutions’ legacy
"This collection of essays, written by regional authors, argues that the hardships faced by the region’s poor and marginalised, and the development challenges faced by its states, are to a significant degree the result of current and historic IMF and World Bank policies and programmes, which support an unjust and extractionist world economic order."
Opinion: How development lenders can regain the initiative from China
"Multilateral development banks and development finance institutions have the ultimate responsibility in de-risking projects to attract investment in the global south."
The Role of Multilateral Development Banks in Closing the Climate and Energy Transition Finance Gap
"In this brief we set out why and how MDBs can play a greater role in urgently addressing the climate finance gap in developing countries. The recommendations are designed to be practical and politically realistic. They build on several innovative proposals already being considered in public debate. But the brief also highlights that a key part of the solution involves MDBs fulfilling their traditional role, using existing approaches to financing projects and shaping policy, albeit on a much bigger scale and with much greater speed, in a renewed effort to overcome long-standing obstacles. All of this, of course, is motivated by the existential nature of the climate crisis."
Asian Development Bank to relax rules, lend $100B more over 10 years
"The Asian Development Bank plans to lend an additional $100 billion over the next 10 years, the latest push from multilateral development banks to do more to tackle global challenges, including climate change, with the resources they have. According to the bank, it will now be able to lend about $36 billion annually, roughly a 40% increase in lending. In 2022 the bank made about $20.5 billion in commitments."
October 2 to 8, 2023.
World Bank proposes ways to boost lending by over $100 billion
"The World Bank on Thursday proposed steps that would boost its lending to developing countries by an additional $100 billion over a decade as part of an ongoing reform process aimed at helping the bank expand its mission to include climate change. In a 24-page report to the joint ministerial committee that oversees the bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the bank's management said it would ask shareholders to approve a hybrid capital measure and a new portfolio guarantee platform that together could boost lending by more than $100 billion."
Asian Development Bank unveils capital moves to boost lending by $100 billion over a decade
"The Asian Development Bank (ADB) unveiled new capital reforms on Friday that will unlock $100 billion in new financing capacity over 10 years as the lender expands its development and anti-poverty mission to tackle climate change and other global crises. The Manila-based lender said it was adjusting its risk appetite and reducing its minimum-level of capitalization in a way that preserves its top tier AAA credit rating while allowing it to expand its lending commitments by nearly 40% to about $36 billion annually."
World Bank's Ajay Banga on climate: 'My grandchild's time is running out'
"The plumbing was Ajay Banga’s retort when asked what imprint he’d like to leave on the anti-poverty lender, while the other encapsulates the World Bank president’s passion for taking on the “intertwined” challenges of poverty alleviation and climate change. Banga — who recently marked 100 days on the job — was just as passionate in pushing back on the notion that the bank can’t juggle its poverty mandate with a “perfect storm” of crises ranging from climate change and pandemics to food insecurity and fragility."
AfDB Maps Steps African Nations Need to Mobilize Climate Finance
"The African Development Bank began publishing detailed country reports to help the continent’s nations transition their economies away from fossil fuels and capitalize on green industrial opportunities. The reports are intended to “evoke sound, practical and implementable policies to enhance private sector financing for climate change and green growth,” Kevin Urama, chief economist of the Abidjan-based multilateral development bank, said in a statement on Thursday."
World Bank and IMF Reform Is On the Table. The U.S. Needs to Follow Through.
"The focus on multilateral development banks at the G20 meetings was a promising sign. But commitments and declarations are easy; the difficult part is yet to come, and reform efforts are already at risk of losing momentum. Finding common ground among China and other G20 members, delivering the necessary financing, and seeing through the transformations in how these institutions run will take sustained engagement, even as global attention moves to other issues. None of that can happen without the leadership of the U.S. If the Biden administration is serious about international financial institution reform—and it must be, given the scale of the climate crisis and the need to make progress on global poverty—it must stay the course and see these reforms to the end."
September 25 to 30, 2023.
Statement by World Bank President Ajay Banga, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, and Morocco’s Minister of Economy and Finance Nadia Fettah Alaoui on the 2023 World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings
“Since the devastating earthquake in Morocco on September 8, the World Bank and the IMF staff have worked in close coordination with the Moroccan authorities and a team of experts to thoroughly assess Marrakech’s capacity to host the 2023 Annual Meetings. In undertaking this assessment, key considerations were that the Meetings would not disrupt vital relief and reconstruction efforts, and that the safety of the participants can be assured. Based on a careful review of the findings, the Managements of the World Bank and IMF, together with the Moroccan authorities, have agreed to proceed with holding the 2023 Annual Meetings in Marrakech from October 9 to 15, adapting the content to the circumstances."
From:
IMF
IMF, World Bank to proceed with annual meetings in Morocco in October
"The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and Morocco on Monday announced the annual meetings of the two global institutions would proceed in October in Marrakech, despite a recent nearby earthquake that killed more than 2,900 people."
Yellen Pushes Treasury, World Bank to Fuller Climate Reckoning
"Janet Yellen planted a flag during her confirmation hearing in January 2021. Climate change, she declared, was an “existential threat,” and as Treasury secretary, she would make it a focus of her work. Since taking office, she’s warned of the danger to the economy and financial system. She’s urged Congress and foreign governments in the rich world to do more to help poorer countries adapt to global warming, and thrown the Treasury behind implementing President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, seeking to squeeze the most from the sprawling new law."
NY climate week: Yellen warns of ‘significant economic costs’ of climate change
"US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen will announce a series of new financing “principles” on Tuesday aimed at spurring more private sector cash into climate and clean energy projects and combat greenwashing, in response to what she describes as the “significant economic costs” from global warming."
Financing Our Survival
"Between now and the end of this decade, climate-related investments need to increase by orders of magnitude to keep the world on track toward achieving even more ambitious targets by mid-century. Fortunately, if done right, such investments could usher in an entirely new and better economy."
Africa: Now is the Time to Make International Financial System Fit for Purpose - Kagame
"President Paul Kagame on Tuesday, September 19, stressed the need for reorganizing the international financial mechanism, describing the matter as a real substance for Africa's future, not a competition for the geopolitical influence that has been going on. Kagame made the call at a high-level roundtable titled "Towards a Fair International Financial Architecture" at UN headquarters on the sidelines of the 78th UNGA session. He noted that while he agrees with the notion of changing the world, much more can be done, without waiting."
G20 summit proved naysayers wrong – and showed Global South’s potential to address world’s biggest problems
"And yet, the assembled leaders did release a joint declaration on giving a new impetus to the World Bank, fighting climate change and dealing with infectious diseases, among other issues. One of the main outcomes was the admission of the African Union as a full member, much as the European Union has been from the start."
Inside the World Bank and IDB's plan to increase collaboration
"IDB President Ilan Goldfajn talks about his agreement with the World Bank to collaborate on preserving the Amazon rainforest, Caribbean disaster resilience, and increasing digital access across Latin America."
Energy Transition Accelerator and World Bank Announce Strategic Collaboration To Scale Up Clean Energy Finance
"The U.S. Department of State, the Bezos Earth Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the World Bank today announced a strategic collaboration between the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) and the World Bank to mobilize finance to support just, accelerated energy transitions in developing countries. ETA – a partnership of the State Department and the two philanthropies – aims to catalyze private capital supporting the transition from fossil fuels to clean power through innovative jurisdictional-scale carbon crediting. The World Bank and its new SCALE (Scaling Climate Action by Lowering Emissions) initiative support developing countries in developing power sector policies and carbon market infrastructure needed to generate real emissions reductions in a participatory and inclusive way."
The main storylines at a gloomy United Nations
"This week, the United Nations has also structured in specific summits and conversations about climate change, buttressing global development goals since the disruption of the pandemic, and action on sovereign debt relief — with numerous developing countries on the hook to international lenders on terms that are jeopardizing their ability to invest in their own societies."
September 18 to 24, 2023.
G20 endorses multilateral development bank reform — but will it be enough?
"The G20 backed a joint agreement calling for “better, bigger and more effective” multilateral development banks but stopped short of offering any firm financial commitments, which experts say are needed alongside reforms."
A New Multilateralism: How the United States can rejuvenate the global institutions it created
"Far better for the United States is to take the lead in rebuilding the global order, and here it has the best possible hand. If Washington were sufficiently bold in confronting global problems that need global solutions, then it would not need to obsess so much about Beijing’s increasing influence. Instead, China would be faced with a defining choice: either work with the United States, as it says it wants to, or be exposed for talking about international cooperation and the importance of global institutions while only being interested in a “China first” policy. Today, it looks as if China has the interest needed to be a global beacon but not the values. America has the values but not, as things currently stand, sufficient interest. Values don’t change overnight, but interests can. It’s your move, America."
A Tragedy Is Unfolding in the Poorest Countries
"The world’s 28 poorest countries are facing growing social, economic, and political distress, owing to rising debt burdens, diminishing development prospects, and chronic underinvestment. The world’s wealthier countries have chosen exactly the worst moment to become less generous with aid and development assistance."
We need the G20 — but what is it for?
"If the G20 did not exist, we would have to invent it. Some would counter that the world is so divided that this grouping is unworkable. Yet this fact merely makes the G20, or something like it, even more essential: one does not have to talk to people one already agrees with. A still stronger justification for its existence is that we are no longer able to live in isolated pockets: the health of our planet and our economy depends on our co-operation. Since global challenges are more pressing than ever, so is the need to work together in such a group."
Financing Our Survival
"Between now and the end of this decade, climate-related investments need to increase by orders of magnitude to keep the world on track toward achieving even more ambitious targets by mid-century. Fortunately, if done right, such investments could usher in an entirely new and better economy."
Rule-Making in a Divided World
"The war in Ukraine has accelerated both the fracturing of the world order and countries’ scramble to establish new alignments that can secure their interests. Unless the G7 clarifies its direction, it risks losing its influence, with potentially far-reaching consequences for democratic values globally."
September 11 to 17, 2023.
G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration
"We remain committed to pursuing ambitious efforts to evolve and strengthen MDBs to address the global challenges of the 21st century with a continued focus on addressing the development needs of low- and middle-income countries."
From:
G20
G20 backs bigger role for reformed World Bank
"India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has called for the mandate of multilateral lenders such as the World Bank to be expanded, as the IMF’s managing director demanded an increase in the lender’s resources by the end of the year. Efforts to boost the balance sheets and reform the governance of the Washington-based multilateral lenders have been a central issue at the G20 summit in New Delhi this weekend, partly as a means for western states to curry favour with developing nations amid geopolitical divisions over Russia’s war against Ukraine."
FACT SHEET: Delivering a Better, Bigger, More Effective World Bank
"President Biden is leading a major new initiative with G20 partners to fundamentally reshape and scale up the World Bank to more effectively deliver poverty reduction and inclusive economic growth—while better addressing global challenges that can undermine the achievement of these very goals."
India's Modi: there is need to expand mandate of multilateral development banks
"There is a need to expand the mandate of multilateral development banks and develop global standards to regulate cryptocurrencies, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told G20 leaders during a summit of the bloc on Sunday."
The G20 has flaws but the world still needs it
"In an era of new superpower rivalries and the existential threat of climate change, it is in the global interest, too, for leaders of large but often antagonistic economies to sit down for “jaw-jaw”. The G20 has many flaws and inadequacies. But, aside from the dysfunctional UN, it is the best forum we have."
Can the G-20 Be a Champion for the Global South?
"The G-20 is well positioned to lead this charge and promote change across borders and global decision-making bodies. It holds significant sway in the United Nations and with the multilateral development banks that lend to indebted countries, and its member countries represent 65 percent of the world’s population and 80 percent of its GDP. But if the G-20 wants to solve age-old problems, it needs to embrace new ideas and more inclusive leadership—in New Delhi and beyond."
The Roots of the Global South’s New Resentment: How Rich Countries’ Selfish Pandemic Responses Stoked Distrust
"Of course, the COVID-19 era encompassed only a few of the litany of broken promises between the global North and the global South. But as richer countries struggle to understand the global South—and especially African nations’ ambivalent reaction to Russia’s war on Ukraine—the lingering effect of abandonment during the pandemic is underappreciated. Two kinds of failings defined the COVID-19 era for low-income countries: the global North’s hesitation to share resources equitably and its unwillingness to treat global South countries as equal partners in addressing a shared crisis. Until wealthy countries take concrete steps toward repair, the rift will only grow deeper."
A New Financing Pact for Climate-Vulnerable Countries
"The world’s most vulnerable countries bear the brunt of a climate crisis they did not create, underscoring the urgent need for a “fit for climate” global financial architecture. The Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi represented a unique opportunity to promote concrete solutions ahead of COP28 in Dubai later this year."
What the G20 Must Deliver
"The goal of the upcoming summit in New Delhi must be to advance progress toward a world where poverty is eliminated, the health of our planet is preserved, and vulnerable countries are better equipped to face the crises that arise from climate change and conflicts. Four principles will help guide the way forward."
Joe Biden pushes for bigger World Bank to combat China’s rising influence
"Joe Biden is pushing to secure international support to expand the World Bank’s lending capacity, as Washington comes under intense pressure to fund the fight against climate change and offer a viable alternative to China’s economic influence. The US president and top officials in his administration have placed efforts to enhance the financial firepower of the multilateral lender at the top of the agenda at the G20 leaders’ summit due in New Delhi this weekend."
Yellen to work with India at G20 Summit on communique crafting
"In her prepared comments, Yellen said she will work to build support to increase lending resources for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to help member countries deal with multiple global challenges, including new IMF quota resources."
Joint Statement of the IMF Managing Director and of the World Bank President
“The world confronts significant economic challenges, the existential threat of climate change as well as a digital transition, all in the context of more frequent shocks, high debt levels, limited policy space in many countries and rising geopolitical tensions. Well-designed and appropriately sequenced policies are critical to help accelerate growth, alleviate policy trade-offs, and support the green and digital transitions. The Bretton Woods institutions have a critical role to play to help member countries address the challenges and leverage the opportunities, working closely together and with partners."
IMF, World Bank to step up cooperation on climate, debt, digital transition
"The International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Thursday issued a rare joint statement pledging to step up their cooperation to address climate change, debt vulnerabilities and countries' digital transitions. The statement, released ahead of a G20 leaders summit in India this week, said the two institutions can help address mounting challenges facing the global economy - from increasing climate disasters to slowing growth and geopolitical fragmentation - by working together."
Opinion: Three big, bold ideas to douse the flames of a world on fire
"In New Delhi, where we hope the G-20 will become the G-21, some will simply admire the same problems that others are straining to solve. Some will bring sparks. Some might even fan the flames. But the world doesn’t need any more arsonists. The world needs its firefighters at last to leave the station, which means leadership that recognizes the danger we’re all facing. The three actions we put forward today can supply some of the speed and scale of response that’s required."
Biden to focus on World Bank reform, new funding at G20 in New Delhi
"U.S. President Joe Biden will focus on reforming the World Bank and urging other multilateral development banks to boost lending for climate change and infrastructure projects during the G20 leaders summit in India, the White House said on Tuesday. "That's one of our main focuses heading into the G20: delivering on an agenda fundamentally reshaping and scaling up the multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank," White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters."
September 4 to 10, 2023.
Yellen to attend India G20 summit, focus on economy, climate, Ukraine
"Yellen intends to focus at the summit on strengthening the global economy and supporting low- and middle-income countries by advancing efforts on debt restructurings, the evolution of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and building International Monetary Fund trust fund resources, the Treasury said."
G20 Leaders: The World Is in Crisis. We Need You to Act on Poverty, Hunger, and the Climate Emergency
"MDBs play a crucial role in achieving the UN Global Goals (or Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs), ending poverty, and tackling climate change. The G20’s own Independent Expert Group in 2023 emphasized their importance and the need to right size them with a triple agenda, including tripling MDB financing."
Multilateral banks are in ferment. Transform them
"As the world battles myriad challenges, transformative, and not incremental changes are needed for multilateral development banks. The time to act is now."
Reform the Global Finance System to Fund the Sustainable Development Goals
"Second, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) should operate at a much higher scale. Thanks to their governance system, MDBs—including the World Bank and regional development banks—can borrow and lend to their member countries at lower interest rates. When MDBs borrow on international markets, they offer more guarantees to lenders than individual countries because the loans are guaranteed by all their members. Yet, MDBs operate at a scale which is largely insufficient."
Why the Inter-American Development Bank-World Bank deal matters, and what’s next
"Amid ongoing geopolitical fragmentation and development challenges, empowering the collaboration between multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and the IDB is a hopeful sign of what is possible. It shows how longstanding institutions can begin to modernize to catalyze their own future effectiveness and broader global prosperity. The next challenge, as always, is to transform the ambition into reality."
Opinion: A blueprint for the next decade of development finance
"Governments worldwide are seeking financing to meet development goals. Institutions like ours must help by providing more climate financing and increasingly innovative financial instruments. As government officials and other partners gather for the 4th edition of the Finance in Common Summit, which will be hosted in Cartagena, Latin America, for the first time, we think three areas are especially promising for advancing this agenda."
Easing the burden: Reforms to multilateral lenders and money for developing countries on G20 agenda
"In early September, leaders from the world’s wealthiest countries meet in India for the G20 summit. With inflation and borrowing costs running high, debt and development are high on the agenda. Multilateral development banks provide vital funding to countries in need. But critics say financial conditions imposed by the lenders can keep debt burdens heavy and cut into spending on development. Should these multilateral lenders be reformed? Is there enough money and urgency to help countries drowning in debt? Tune in to UNCTAD’s Penelope Hawkins to find out how multilateral banks can make funding more available and more sustainable."
How can development finance institutions drive mobilisation?
"At British International Investment, we’re working to sharpen our approach to mobilisation. In Understanding Mobilisation, our first paper on the topic which was published earlier this year, we suggested a critical step towards more successful mobilisation by DFIs is to understand it better. In particular we argued there are many more capital events that can lead to mobilisation than those traditionally captured in the measurement of mobilisation. In our new paper, Driving Mobilisation, we dive deeper into two practical strategies that DFIs might adopt in pursuit of higher quality and greater levels of mobilisation. Both draw from commercial banking practises."
Re-thinking and Revitalizing SDG Financing
"Delays in implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and 2030 Agenda increasingly appear to come partly from unmet financing needs as well as the inability and unwillingness of the G20 to move away from fossil fuel subsidies. The current state of play reflects the international financial architecture’s failure to channel resources to the world’s most vulnerable economies at the necessary scale and speed. A study by IDOS, IDDRI, and SEI finds effective SDG financing is possible when four main conditions are met."
India’s G20 Leadership: Elevating Capacity Building for Sustainable Development Financing
"India’s G20 Presidency has identified the mandate for the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) as thus: “capacity building of the ecosystem for financing sustainable development.” The aim is to scale up efforts in mobilising large pools of global capital for sustainable projects, particularly in emerging and developing economies. Under the aegis of the Sustainable Finance Working Group (SFWG), the G20 proposes the development of the first Technical Assistance Action Plan (TAAP) that will create an ecosystem of capacity-building initiatives encompassing a series of advisory, operational, and technical programs. While the TAAP succeeds in proposing actionable recommendations for capacity-building providers, it does not incorporate a delivery mechanism nor an outcome-based approach to realise these priorities and ambitions. This paper recommends a deliverable-oriented framework for capacity building as identified by the SFWG under India’s G20 presidency."
Devex Invested: Can development banks find common ground in Colombia?
"The goal of next week’s summit is to get these institutions better educated and aligned with the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. This year there will be a close look at small and medium-sized enterprises and financial inclusion, climate and biodiversity, sustainable infrastructure, strengthening national public development banks, and more. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro is expected to make an appearance, as are the leaders of EIB and the Inter-American Development Bank. "
August 28 to 3 September, 2023.
World Bank’s private sector lab to focus on energy transition financing
“How to expand private investment toward helping low-income countries transition to renewable energy is the inaugural focus of the World Bank’s newly launched Private Sector Investment Lab. The lab, announced by the World Bank’s new president, Ajay Banga, in June, brings together 15 chief executives, including financiers and asset managers, to identify specific ways — including new financing structures and partnerships — the World Bank can help entice private investors to channel more money into low- and middle-income countries.”
From:
Sophie Edwards, Devex
Biden To Push IMF And World Bank Reforms At G20 Summit: White House
“US President Joe Biden will urge reforms to the IMF and World Bank that will better serve developing country needs at the G20 summit in New Delhi next month, the White House said Tuesday. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the two need to offer a better alternative for development support and financing to what he called China’s “coercive and unsustainable lending” through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.”
From:
AFP, Barron’s
Limiting climate change requires rechannelling of Special Drawing Rights to Multilateral Development Banks
“Investments are needed around the globe to mitigate climate change, but it is in developing countries, where population growth and economic growth prospects are greatest, that climate mitigation investments need to grow the most. This column argues that closing the climate investment gap in these countries requires rechannelling of Special Drawing Rights to Multilateral Development Banks, which can bring down the currently often prohibitively high cost of climate finance to acceptable levels.”
From:
Dirk Schoenmaker and Rens van Tilburg, CEPR
China hopes expanded Brics will turn world upside down
“All this, China hopes, will give it the heft that Beijing has long sought to reform the way the world works. Indeed, China cherishes many ambitions, some of which were discernible through a heavy loam of diplomatic language in the 26-page declaration after the Brics summit this week… One of these demands was for an overhaul of the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the IMF. Currently, the operations of both institutions are dominated by the US, Japan and other western democracies.”
From:
James Kynge, Financial Times
The Global Order’s Triple Policy Challenge
“With sovereign debt at record levels and extreme weather events becoming more frequent and intense, policymakers must find a way to sustain economic growth, ensure financial stability, and mobilize the necessary resources to combat climate change. Achieving this requires nothing less than a new economic paradigm.”
From:
William R. Rhodes and John Lipsky, Project Syndicate
August 21 to 27, 2023.
World Bank’s green overhaul is slowly taking shape
“To step up the fight against climate change, World Bank President Ajay Banga wants to overhaul the lender’s balance sheet without overturning its credit rating. The bank’s new chief has a golden opportunity to expand the bank’s reach, thanks to support from U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. At least $200 billion in extra resources each year need to materialise for the bank to do its part.”
From:
Rebecca Christie, Reuters
The World Bank must reform
“Reforming the multilateral development banks (MDBs) is an important aspect of the global reforms agenda under India’s G20 presidency. The World Bank Group (WBG), as the largest MDB, is the most prominent candidate for such reforms. By taking a lead in reforming itself, it can set an example for other MDBs.”
From:
Poonam Gupta, Business Standard
Rebeca Grynspan: Remodelling financing for Africa needs will from IMF, World Bank
“Multilateral development banks have to leverage the private investments needed for the continent but that is not happening. Only two percent of the renewable energy investment is coming to Africa. It doesn’t make sense in terms of your need and the universal access that you still need to achieve.”
From:
Vincent Owino, The East African
The à la carte world: our new geopolitical order
“For a telling insight into the seismic changes reshaping the global order, it is worth a glance at the official schedule of Kenya’s diplomats. There was a time when they were called upon to host delegations from global powers relatively rarely. No longer. Now there is barely a slot free in their calendar.”
From:
Alec Russell, Financial Times
August 14 to 20, 2023.
Deep dive: Progress on MDB reforms, but a long way to go
“It’s been a big year so far for the World Bank and efforts to reform multilateral institutions and the global financial system. But some major questions remain.”
From:
Adva Saldinger, Devex
August 7 to 13, 2023.
World Bank Group and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Work Together to Address G20 Capital Adequacy Framework Recommendations
"The World Bank Group and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have been working together to address the G20 Capital Adequacy Framework Working Group recommendations for Multilateral Development Banks to expand their use of financial innovation to provide additional lending capacity. The proposal would utilize AIIB’s capital surplus to issue $1 billion guarantees against sovereign backed loans made by the World Bank Group’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which would provide relief against capital constraints, enabling IBRD to provide fresh lending, as well as diversifying and enhancing AIIB’s portfolio, which would in turn enable it to increase lending to low-income borrowers. This proposal is subject to the respective approval process of both institutions."
From:
World Bank
ADB, African Development Bank Sign $1 Billion Sovereign Exposure Exchange Agreement
"The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the African Development Bank today signed a $1 billion sovereign exposure exchange that aims to strengthen their capital adequacy levels and boost their lending capacity. The exchange is the third agreement between ADB and a peer multilateral development bank (MDB). The first two contracts were signed with the Inter-American Development Bank in 2020 and 2022 for a total of $2.5 billion."
From:
Asian Development Bank
African Development Bank achieves highest rating on proposed hybrid capital issuance
"The African Development Bank Group has received global recognition for its planned hybrid capital issuance, positioning the Bank as a pioneer in innovative sustainable financing. The S&P Global Ratings assigned an AA-rating to the Bank’s initiative, the highest rating for hybrid capital. The proposed issuance would be the first ever by a multilateral development bank."
From:
African Development Bank
July 31 to 6, 2023.
Financial Innovation and Multilateral Development Banks
“The ongoing policy debate on the global investment gap for sustainability is focusing on the mobilisation of available capital for the scaling up of investment. This Policy Brief considers to what extent international financial institutions can play a catalytic role in the effectiveness of this exercise with innovative products and proactive capacity building in the Global South. It is proposed that a financial innovation transfer channel from multilateral development banks (MDBs) to financial institutions in developing countries (estimated balance sheet US$ 600 billion and US$ 9,600 billion, respectively) be opened up in five areas—i.e., loan syndications, lending facilities, private equity participation, infrastructure project de-risking, and balance sheet optimisation. The climate change agenda is an opportunity for a streamlined approach on the diffusion of financial innovation. Expected benefits are procedures-related (efficiency and access to underserved markets) and product-related (for example, with the aggregation of financial transactions supporting climate finance adaptation.”
From:
Anthony Bartzokas, ORF
IDB Offers Backing for Novel Sustainability Bonds in Ecuador
“The Inter-American Development Bank Group’s private sector arm IDB Invest is the lead investor in two novel sustainability bonds in Ecuador styled on a model that proponents say significantly lowers the risk of greenwashing.”
From:
Natasha White, Bloomberg
Opinion: What additionality brings to blended finance
“In development finance, additionality refers to achievement of an outcome that would likely not happen without donor support. Based on USAID’s experience, here’s how additionality can help evaluate the impact of catalytic funding.”
From:
Natalie Alm and Sharon D’Onofrio, Devex
Global Public Investment for Global Challenges
“The G20 has for two decades played a leading role addressing risks and challenges to the global financial architecture and in innovating new structures in response. Today the world suffers from a series of interlinked crises. To address these challenges, this Policy Brief recommends that, at its India summit, the G20 leverage its track record of geo-economic leadership by taking concrete, initial steps to develop Global Public Investment: a new paradigm of international public finance that has the potential to meet 21st-century needs in climate, health, and other global, common challenges. Global Public Investment is a parallel arrangement to Official Development Assistance (ODA) in which all countries, not just donor countries, contribute and participate in priority setting and governance and in which all countries stand to benefit. This brief outlines how such a system could work and the G20’s potential role in initiating such an arrangement.”
From:
Simon Reid-Henry and Christoph Benn, ORF
July 17 to 23, 2023.
The World Bank Reflects Our Ambition
“In an environment of intertwined challenges – including an existential climate crisis, a fledgling pandemic recovery, and a crippling war on the borders of Europe – the World Bank has never been more relevant. But, to deliver solutions at scale, the Bank must adopt a new vision that is worthy of its stakeholders’ shared aspirations.”
From:
Ajay Banga, Project Syndicate
African Development Bank Moves Into Debt-for-Nature Swaps Market
“The African Development Bank Group is in discussions to back a new debt-for-nature swap, marking its entry into a fast-growing corner of the sustainable debt market. “We’re looking at one transaction [and] still discussing the parameters,” said Hassatou Diop N’Sele, vice president for finance and chief financial officer at the AfDB, in an interview. She declined to identify the country initiating the deal through which it would refinance its debt in exchange for allocating some of the savings to green projects.”
From:
Natasha White and Antony Sguazzin, Bloomberg
African states detail their needs on World Bank reform ahead of G20
“African states formed a unified position on World Bank reforms that centers their needs on fighting poverty and hunger and pushes back against the more narrow demands of wealthy Western shareholders that focus on climate change and pandemics. A document, agreed upon by consensus and representing the common position of African states, argues that food security, water, and affordable energy are “global public goods,” and lays out concerns about financing the digital transformation. It was issued ahead of the 20 leading rich and developing nations, or G20, finance ministers’ meeting in India coming up next week.”
From:
Shabtai Gold, Devex
How the Bridgetown Initiative envisions global financial system reform
“Mia Mottley’s initiative seeks to overhaul global finance to make climate finance available to vulnerable countries that are historically low carbon emitters. Three experts explain what’s at stake.”
From:
Shabtai Gold, Devex
Why the Paris Financing Summit Failed
“The June 22-23 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact promised to catalyze a revolution in climate finance and empower the Global South. But it failed to meet its lofty goals, concluding without a single firm commitment or concrete proposal to help developing countries reduce their debt burden and move away from fossil fuels.”
From:
Jayati Ghosh, Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, and Johannah Bernstein, Project Syndicate
G20 finance chiefs set to discuss reforms to development banks, crypto, debt
“Finance ministers and central bank governors of the G20 member nations are set to meet and discuss reforms to multilateral development banks, a framework for crypto assets and debt treatement of some countries, an Indian government official said Wednesday. India, which holds this year’s G20 presidency, will host global finance chiefs and deputies in the western state of Gujarat between July 14-18.”
From:
Reuters
Changing the Culture at the World Bank
“To tackle the complex challenges facing the World Bank, its newly-appointed President, Ajay Banga, must prove that the institution can become a vehicle for sustainable development and transformative change. But first, Banga must guide the Bank toward complete transparency.”
From:
Bertrand Badre and Peter Blair Henry, Project Syndicate
World Bank names CEOs to help bring private funds to climate, development finance
“The World Bank on Monday named 15 chief executive officers including financiers and asset managers to a group launched by the lender’s president, Ajay Banga, aiming to marshal more private capital to combat climate change and boost investment in developing countries. The “Private Sector Investment Lab” will begin work in the coming weeks, initially focusing on expanding financing for the transition to renewable energy and associated infrastructure, the bank said in a statement released at a climate meeting in Britain attended by U.S. President Joe Biden and King Charles.”
From:
David Lawder, Reuters
Reorienting IFIs for Meeting Emerging Development Financing Challenges
“The reform of international financial institutions (IFI) is moving at a ‘business as usual’ pace. The agility of IFIs, however, must be improved to respond swiftly during crises. IFIs will need to perform better in bridging the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) financing gap and ensuring greater economic resilience of least developed countries (LDCs) as well as developing economies that struggle to mobilise funding for expediting digital and green transitions. This Policy Brief suggests a multi-pronged strategy for the G20 in expediting the reform of IFIs so they can better deal with emerging challenges, including climate change and digital divide. These recommendations should also help IFIs decouple lending decisions from sovereign ratings, pursue innovative financing tools, and strengthen private capital mobilisation. IFIs should boost their regional coverage to expand cross-border and regional infrastructure financing.
From:
Arun S. Nair, Dandy Rafitrandi, Priyadarshi Dash, and Yose Rizal Damuri, ORF
July 10 to 16, 2023.
What the Paris Development Finance Summit Missed
“The biggest problem with global climate finance today is that only a small share of it goes to developing countries. Far more must be done to create a better working relationship between multilateral development banks and the major private investors that hold the key to closing the financing gap.”
From:
Havard Halland, Justin Yifu Lin, and Alan Gelb, Project Syndicate
G20 experts urge ‘inescapable’ capital increase for development banks
“Nine experts say multilateral development bank reform is possible — at a cost.”
From:
Vince Chadwick and Shabtai Gold, Devex
The World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap needs a rethink to deliver for the global south, say more than 70 civil society organisations and individuals
“As part of the consultation on the World Bank Group’s controversial Evolution Roadmap, organisations including the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), the Bretton Woods Project, Christian Aid, Third World Network, and the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) have produced a comprehensive briefing which contains recommendations that would transform the current problematic proposals.”
From:
Julia Ravenscroft, Eurodad
Reforming the Global Financial Architecture to Drive a Resilient Net-Zero Transition
“Global climate goals need continued attention in good times and in bad. However, the effects of recent global shocks have delayed progress on the net-zero transition, climate change adaptation and wider sustainability goals. Delay will increase the economic expense of transition and environmental damages. The global community can and must embed shock-proofing and shock-responsive approaches into fiscal policies and the evolving global financial architecture so that shocks no longer inhibit progress—this is referred to as a resilient net-zero transition. The G20, through its fiscal policies, financial regulation, and the Bretton Woods institutions, has a crucial role to play in shaping the architecture for a resilient net-zero transition. This Policy Brief recommends the creation of a dedicated financing facility for emerging and developing economies to help maintain progress on climate goals during crises; and that the G20 aligns the global financial system, including fiscal and development finance, with climate-resilient development.”
From:
Nicola Ranger, Brian O’Callaghan, Fulvia Marotta, and Sam Fankhauser, ORF
Paris climate summit: A new global financing pact takes shape
“But it was unrealistic to have expected too much. Yes, the developing countries of the Global South deserve much more. So do publics in Western countries, given the common interest in preserving the planet, global stability, and a sense of international justice. But we must also look for realistic ways forward and gauge things accordingly.”
From:
Roland Rajah and Georgia Hammersley, Lowy Institute
July 3 to 9, 2023.
The choice between a poorer today and a hotter tomorrow
“Suppose, for a minute, that you are a finance minister in the developing world. At the end of a year in which your tax take has disappointed, you are just about out of money. You could plough what little remains into your health-care system: dollars spent by clinics help control infectious diseases, and there is not much that development experts believe to be a better use of cash. But you could also spend the money constructing an electrical grid that is able to handle a switch to clean energy. In the long run this will mean less pollution, more productive farmland and fewer floods. Which is a wiser use of the marginal dollar: alleviating acute poverty straight away or doing your country’s bit to stop baking the planet?"
From:
The Economist
How misfiring environmentalism risks harming the world’s poor
“The reality of limited resources worsens the trade-off. The need to spend money decarbonising big developing economies that already offer citizens reasonable services threatens aid budgets which help pay for things like vaccines and schooling in the poorest parts of Africa. Unlike Brazil or India, say, such nations are unlikely ever to contribute significantly to global emissions.”
From:
The Economist
Rethinking Climate Finance for the Developing World
“For decades, rich countries have urged developing countries to shift away from fossil fuels while failing to heed their own advice or offer meaningful funding. Kenyan President William Ruto’s recent call to establish a new “global green bank” is the sort of thoughtful proposal that developed countries must seriously consider.”
From:
Kenneth Rogoff, Project Syndicate
What’s next on the road from Paris to Dubai for climate finance
“What was missing from Paris last week was most of the G7 country leaders, and any substantial new finance or debt cancellation for poor countries suffering disproportionately from climate change. The proposals for reform presented were also criticised by non-profit groups representing some of those most affected as too modest or not concrete enough.”
From:
Attracta Mooney and Kenza Bryan, Financial Times
Lessons from the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact
“First and foremost, the results of the Paris Summit show that it is useful to maintain pressure on governments and international organizations to deliver on their pledges and commitments to various initiatives, as well as to agree to new ones to help DLICs. Even though each of the measures is insignificant compared to the overall needs, cumulatively many of them can provide tangible support to DLICs. More importantly, as mentioned earlier, countries should be aware of the risk of letting these debt alleviation and climate change mitigation initiatives be caught up and used as political scoring points in the geopolitical conflict between the West and China. This will make it difficult to build the consensus required to move forward in these efforts.”
From:
Hung Tran, Atlantic Council
Climate Finance Summit Fails to Deliver Critical Results for Vulnerable Countries
“So our call to the world’s development banks was to make loans more available to countries who need access to funding NOW; reform their processes so they can respond better to the climate crisis; and, amid a spiraling debt crisis that’s hitting low-income countries hard, find urgent solutions to the current debt crisis and shake up mechanisms to prevent further debt distress.”
From:
Camille May and Tess Lowery, Global Citizen
Devex Invested: Was Macron’s finance summit worth the hype?
“Our take? Macron took some flak for circumventing existing United Nations processes with a nonbinding, organization-heavy, deliverable-light gathering. And there was an element of theater in him taking out his pen and paper Friday morning to note leaders’ concerns from around the world — as if he didn’t know African leaders want Europe to do more to tackle illicit financial flows!”
From:
Vince Chadwick, Devex
In Paris, IMF and World Bank in hot seat as calls for reform grow
““The time is now, something’s happening, and there’s a lot of hope in the air.” This phrase, slipped in by the prime minister of a West African country on the side-lines of the summit for a new global financial pact, organised in Paris on 22 and 23 June, encapsulates a collective sentiment.”
June 26 to 2, 2023.
World Bank set to unveil ‘pause clauses’ for countries hit by disasters
“The World Bank will allow countries hit by disasters to pause repayments on loans to the multilateral lender, in a win for a campaign led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley. World Bank president Ajay Banga will unveil a range of measures, including the pause on repayments and embedding catastrophe insurance into new loans, in a speech in Paris on Thursday.”
From:
Attracta Mooney, Aime Williams, and Leila Abboud, Financial Times
IMF Touts $100 Billion for Poorest; Zambia Deal: Paris Update
“The International Monetary Fund confirmed rich countries have channeled $100 billion to finance lending for the world’s poorest economies, while Senegal announced $2.7 billion of energy-transition support and Zambia was set to clinch a debt restructuring at a summit in Paris on Thursday.”
From:
William Horobin, Akshat Rathi and Viktoria Dendrinou, Bloomberg
IDB and IMF to Deepen Ties to Catalyze Climate Reforms and Private Sector Resources for Climate Action
“The IMF and IDB will enhance strategies for countries to accelerate climate financing, including through policy reforms, capacity development support, and evaluating tailored financing arrangements—such as blended finance instruments, green bonds and others, including potential designs for a regional green fund structure—with each institution acting within its respective mandate – in order to explore further complementarities between the RSF-supported reforms and IDB funding and guarantees, to scale and mobilize much needed private climate financing.”
From:
IMF
An impasse over finance between rich and poor that threatens the planet
“It’s a strong argument. But it’s up against not just the potential reluctance of the rich countries to shell out but mistrust of multilateral institutions among middle-income powers. Meanwhile, geopolitical divisions over Ukraine have unhelpfully made relations between some advanced and developing countries trickier. The reform agenda deserves success, but it has a lot of entrenched suspicion to overcome.”
From:
Alan Beattie, Financial Times
A Green Transition That Leaves No One Behind (also in Washington Post)
“An estimated 120 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty in the last three years, and we are still far from achieving our United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. We should thus place people at the center of a strategy to increase human welfare everywhere.”
What It Will Take to Transform Development Finance
“The Bridgetown Initiative, launched in Barbados last summer and recently updated, calls on everyone to maximize investments in preventing and responding to climate-related events and pandemics. With the right strategy, multilateral development banks can play a central role in this urgent global mission.”
From:
Mia Amor Mottley and Werner Hoyer, Project Syndicate
Opinion: Strengthening the MDB system to meet the climate challenge
“”At the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris, I will ask my MDB peers to join hands in exploring new ways to improve our collective effectiveness,” AIIB President Jin Liqun writes in this opinion.”
From:
Jin Liqun, Devex
The green transition won’t happen without financing for developing countries
“In brief, this clever paper makes four points: first, macroeconomic risk makes climate projects unfinanceable in developing countries; second, the global climate challenge cannot be met if these projects are not financed on an enormous scale; third, markets exaggerate these risks, especially in bad times; and, finally, the expected gains of official intervention would exceed the costs, partly because so much is at stake.”
From:
Martin Wolf, Financial Times
“De-risking capital is key to scaling up development finance”, African Development Bank’s Adesina tells OPEC Fund forum
“African Development Bank Group president Akinwumi Adesina called for new ways of project preparation and de-risking of projects to mobilise private sector investment at scale for sustainable development. “We’ve got where the private sector is. We’ve got US$ 145 trillion of assets under management (and) by 2026 it’s going to be there… but the issue here is that we need new ways of aggregation to prepare the projects, to de-risk the projects and lower the transaction cost for those deploying capital,” Adesina reiterated.”
From:
AfDB
Multilateralism for the Future: New Challenges, New Models, New Solutions
“‘Problems without passports’ have driven the evolution of networked models of multilateralism that have had significant impacts, but still cannot overcome the gap between global challenges and solutions. In pursuit of its goal of building multilateral institutions for 21st-century challenges, the G20 should use its comparative advantage as a leadership forum to make these governance innovations more effective and inclusive. This policy brief recommends the G20 should support the establishment of an emergency platform to respond to systemic risks, launch a G20 Acceleration Initiative for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and for climate, and increase the capacity of the international system to think, plan, and act for the future. In a period when its presidency is held by countries from the Global South (Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa), the G20 should use major global moments—the SDG Summit, Global Stocktake, and Summit of the Future—to benefit young countries where the majority of future generations will be born.”
From:
David Steven and Valeria Colunga, ORF
Paris Summit Aims to Shake Up the Financial System, Testing Leaders’ Resolve on Climate
“Masood Ahmed, president of the Center for Global Development think tank in Washington, isn’t expecting much concrete action from the gathering but a broad agreement that “we’ve got to think much bigger, much bolder. We need to be willing to change.””
From:
Fatima Hussein and Paul Wiseman, TIME
Comment: Paris summit needs to heed Mia Mottley’s call for shake-up of global climate finance
“Bringing that cost down means addressing the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and how they can work better as a system, aligned with the International Monetary Fund, to strike a balance between fiscal, macroeconomic and sustainability goals. It also means addressing the needs of government and the private sector for good-quality advisory services to enable finance to flow, and how to mitigate and hedge other risks that slow investment, including currency risks.”
From:
Rachel Kyte, Reuters
Unlocking Climate Trillions With a Global Plan From a Sinking Island
“A financial official from an island that’s among the world’s most vulnerable to global warming has a plan to quickly increase the amount spent on climate solutions in developing nations. And his plan requires little additional spending by rich countries. “If you focus only on grants, only on people transferring money to you, you’re never gonna get the scale we need to save the planet,” says Avinash Persaud, a Barbados-born, UK-raised development economist who was previously a banker in the City of London. His target for spending on emissions-reducing projects alone by developing countries is about $1.5 trillion per year — or seven times the sum rich countries currently give in overseas development aid for all causes, including health and poverty reduction.”
From:
Akshat Rathi, Bloomberg
June 19 to 25, 2023.
Sustainable Future Bonds: Boosting MDB Lending and Improving the Global Reserve System
“This policy brief presents a proposal for MDB hybrid capital that is designed to not only boost MDB funding but also supply the international reserve system with a new safe asset. We provide an illustrative example of how such a scheme could work and ultimately show that rechanneling a tiny fraction of the global foreign reserves could result in mobilizing at least $60 billion per year in fresh capital to MDBs. At that pace, by 2030, MDBs will have almost $500 billion in capital injections— which would result in a loan portfolio of more than $2.5 trillion. If properly deployed, such a level of financing could enable the MDBs to play a transformational role in a global transition to a low-carbon, resilient and more equal global economy.”
From:
Marina Zucker-Marques and Kevin P. Gallagher, Boston University
Scoop: Macron summit docs show limited vision for development banks
“Even the word “commit” was too strong for some.”
From:
Vince Chadwick, Devex
Can Avinash Persaud Convince Capitalists to Embrace Green Growth?
“Yet as he attempts to use the global shocks of the 2020s to his advantage, Persaud is also their captive: an embattled internationalist attempting to work through multilateral institutions with shrinking clout, promoting global public goods in a world increasingly fragmenting into rival blocs.”
From:
Lee Harris, Foreign Policy
Greening Public Financial Institutions: Lessons from the G20
“Steeper cuts to energy emissions will be needed to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5˚C, and shifting public financial flows away from fossil fuels towards clean energy will be key to bridge the ‘Great Green Gap’. Greening public financial institutions (PFIs) will be critical to scaling financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and crowd in private capital. Through examining recent trends and select case studies on energy finance, this Policy Brief proposes solutions to improve data transparency on the portfolio emissions of PFIs, reform the international climate finance architecture, and build capacity among national and subnational PFIs through technical assistance programs to evaluate climate risks and green their portfolios. These solutions can strengthen the existing commitments of the G20 member states and inform G20 Working/Expert Groups.”
From:
Swasti Raizada and Natalie Jones, ORF
Explainer: What is the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’ asking for at Paris financial summit?
“President Macron hosts a summit in Paris this week to discuss reform of the world’s multilateral finance institutions in the face of climate change and other development challenges. A key topic of discussion will be suggestions from a group of developing countries, led by Barbados, dubbed the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’.”
From:
Reuters
What the Paris Finance Summit Must Do
“Western countries must join the effort to transform multilateral financial institutions, even if it means ceding some of their own influence to others who have previously been marginalized. And those pursuing systemic reforms must resist the temptation merely to tweak current arrangements.”
From:
Sebastien Treyer and Bertrand Badre, Project Syndicate
David Miliband laments the West’s divisive approach to tackling global crises
“Framing global challenges in terms of impunity versus accountability captures far more accurately than the democracy-autocracy dualism the multi-dimensional nature of the abuse of power in the international system. The global order is changing, and checks on the abuse of power—so-called “countervailing power”—need to be strengthened in a range of contexts, democratic and autocratic. The war in Europe matters a lot. But the transatlantic alliance needs to show that it understands that the war is just one of a series of global challenges, and it must step up to the others too.”
From:
David Miliband, The Economist
World Bank’s new chief wants ‘better bank’ before pushing for bigger bank
“World Bank President Ajay Banga wants to focus on improving the development lender so that he can earn the right to press member countries for more capital, as the new chief looks to expand its role in fighting climate change, pandemics and other crises. Banga said in an interview he would wait to seek a capital increase until he has made progress re-focusing the bank’s development lending on more impactful projects, made it more nimble and boosted lending with its existing balance sheet.”
From:
David Lawder, Reuters
Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen at the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action Event
“That’s why Treasury and the Biden Administration are pursuing important policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Examples include our Inflation Reduction Act clean energy investments, which will have positive spillovers across the world. They also include our Just Energy Transition Partnerships in our partner countries – along with our initiative to evolve the multilateral development banks to better address global challenges like the climate crisis. We are also considering ways to encourage private sector delivery of net-zero commitments and activities.”
From:
US Treasury
Transcript: The Paris Meeting That Could Move Trillions to Climate
“Avinash Persaud has a plan, and it’s called the Bridgetown Agenda. Persaud is the special envoy on investment and financial services for Barbados; working with his country’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, he wants to transform the global financial system so that it helps developing countries roll out clean technologies like wind and solar much faster. Next week, Persaud will be presenting the latest version of the Bridgetown Agenda in front of world leaders in Paris, at a summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi sits down with Persaud ahead of the summit to discuss the details of his solutions, and why he thinks now is the time these aging financial institutions will be finally reformed. Learn more about the podcast here, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, and Google to stay on top of new episodes.”
From:
Akshat Rathi, Oscar Boyd and Christine Driscoll, Bloomberg
Exclusive: World Bank chief to ‘push’ its balance sheet, vows to protect ‘AAA’ rating
“World Bank President Ajay Banga told Reuters that he will “push” the lender’s balance sheet hard to help fight climate change and other crises, but this may only yield tens of billions of dollars in additional annual lending, not the hundreds of billions hoped for by some. Banga said in an interview late on Tuesday that he will roll out steps in the coming weeks and months to evolve the World."
From:
David Lawder, Reuters
Developing countries have hit the financial rocks
“Yes, the shocks of recent years have made generous and effective action more politically difficult in high-income countries. Frightened people become inward-looking. But these shocks have also, beyond any doubt, made action more vital. Banga has inherited what is, if wisely used, an institution more valuable as a pulpit than as a bank. In these hard times, he must use it well, to bring the world together to tackle these highly urgent challenges.”
From:
Martin Wolf, Financial Times
World Bank’s new chief Banga to sharpen focus on projects with measurable impact
“World Bank President Ajay Banga wants the lender to focus on more “scalable, replicable” projects across Latin America and elsewhere for transport and infrastructure and digitization of government and financial services to speed development. Banga, on his first foreign trip since taking office, told Reuters on Monday that he wanted the bank to prioritize its work and “pick a few things and push them really hard, so that in my lifetime, I can measure the impact.””
From:
David Lawder, Reuters
June 12 to 18, 2023.
World Bank must drive private investment in climate transition, new chief says
“The World Bank must use “informed risk-taking” to encourage private investors to get more engaged in helping developing countries deal with climate change and leapfrog fossil-fuel energy sources, its new president Ajay Banga said on Sunday. Banga told CNN’s ‘Fareed Zakaria GPS’ program that efforts now underway to stretch the World Bank’s lending capacity and revamp its business model could potentially free up “tens of billions” of dollars, but not the estimated trillions of dollars needed to ensure a just energy transition.”
From:
Andrea Shalal, Reuters
Maximising the developmental value of MDB callable capital: a new research agenda
“A better understanding of callable capital’s value could result in a substantial increase in available lending headroom, within an overall framework of long-term financial sustainability and a AAA bond rating. This is an essential step in modernising the MDB financial model to face the challenges of the coming decades. This ODI research project directly addresses these issues. It was among the first recipients of funding announced by the MDB Challenge Fund at the 2023 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Preliminary research findings are expected by October 2023, and the final results by end-April 2024. For more details on the project team and research components, see the Annex below.”
From:
Chris McHugh, Eamonn White, Chris Humphrey, and Bianca Getzel, ODI
Background Press Call Previewing the Vice President’s Travel to the Bahamas
“More specifically, the Vice President and our administration are advocating for: One, significant new concessional financing delivered through a new window or other innovative mechanism to incentivize action on global challenges such as the climate crisis. Two, focus on the climate crisis and the mission of the World Bank. And three, renewed focus on mobilizing the private sector in support of these aims.”
From:
White House
Institutional Drift: Multipolarity, Bretton Woods, and Parallel Multilateral Development Banks
“The IMF and the World Bank constitute key components of the global governance architecture developed after the Second World War. As the world has become multipolar, however, the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) have largely failed to adapt their policies and organisational structures. The lack of influence in established governance institutions by non-Western economies has contributed to a sense of marginalisation and driven the increasing focus on developing parallel multilateral development banks (MDBs) that diffuse alternative norms and present alternatives to the BWI. While parallel MDBs can produce net benefits, their relative novelty and potential competition with the BWI also creates regulatory and operational challenges. This Policy Brief argues that the G20 must follow a two-track approach that pursues both reform of the BWI and coordination between the BWI and parallel MDBs to maximise positive development outcomes and reduce potential tensions.”
From:
Aaron Magunna, Observer Research Foundation
Reformed MDBs for a Just Energy Transition in Emerging Economies
“It is imperative for this year’s Indian G20 presidency to find solutions and push the agenda of MDB reform. The unique nature of the G20, i.e., members comprising of both shareholders and borrowers of MDBs, will be key in pursuing the reform agenda. The G20 could act as a forum to improve diplomatic relations between countries so that MDBs gain confidence to enhance their lending capacity. Considering the magnitude of financing required towards climate action and just transitions, this Policy Brief outlines pertinent recommendations towards MDB reform, which the G20 as a unique platform can push into their agenda.”
From:
Soham Banerjee, Amlan Mishra, and Tristan Ace, Observer Research Foundation
Reforming Financial Architecture to Achieve New Forms of Cooperation
“To scale up international public development and climate financing, the Secretary-General suggests: A massive increase in development lending and improved terms of lending; Changes to the business models of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and other public development banks to focus on SDG impact, as well as leveraging private finance more effectively for SDG impact; Massive increases to climate finance, while ensuring additionality; More effective use of the system of development banks to increase lending and SDG impact; And ensuring that the poorest can continue to benefit from the MDB system.”
From:
Elena Kosolapova, IISD
Readout of Vice President Harris’s Meeting with World Bank President Ajay Banga
“The Vice President underscored the Biden-Harris Administration’s strong support for World Bank efforts to make investments and spur policy reforms that reduce poverty and advance achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. She praised the steps taken to evolve the World Bank—including expanding its mission to include building resilience to global challenges like climate change, pandemics, fragility and conflict. She underscored that addressing these global challenges is interlinked with and indivisible from the Bank’s work to eliminate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity. The Vice President welcomed President Banga’s commitment and high ambition in driving forward this evolution initiative.”
From:
White House
Opinion: ‘Impact for the buck’ is right leverage ratio in blended finance
“To avoid these pitfalls, the initial and fundamental step in deploying blended finance is to build a credible impact thesis. The process involves critically assessing the determining factors that will maximize “impact for the buck.” Drawing on development economics theories and insights from past interventions are key factors for achieving success.”
From:
Matthieu Pegon, Devex
The west should pay heed to Ajay Banga
“He has a huge role at a critical inflection point in the global development story. Many of the global south’s millennium development successes have been reversed because of the pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This is a slow-burning crisis. A growing share of the west’s largesse is directed at Ukraine. That will be even more true in the years ahead as Ukrainian reconstruction becomes a priority. If we want to win hearts and minds in the global south, and reduce China’s grip over its client list, we will have to do far better than this. Banga should be given everything he needs to do this job.”
From:
Edward Luce, Financial Times
New World Bank chief under pressure as ‘Bridgetown initiative’ seeks $100bn
“The World Bank is under increasing pressure to reform, following a call for $100bn in fresh capital to drive climate and development finance ahead of a summit in Paris to be co-hosted by the leaders of Barbados and France. The proposal for extra capital and $100bn in foreign exchange guarantees are central to a big update, put forward by Barbados’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, of last year’s so-called Bridgetown Initiative to overhaul the lending institutions, in a consultation document seen by the Financial Times.”
From:
Aime Williams, Attracta Mooney, Camilla Hodgson, and Alice Hancock, Financial Times
Our Common Agenda Policy Brief 6: Reforms to the International Financial Architecture
“The present policy brief sets out action-oriented recommendations for reforming the international financial and tax architecture in six areas: a) Global economic governance; b) Debt relief and the cost of sovereign borrowing; c) International public finance; d) The global financial safety net; e) Policy and regulatory frameworks that address short-termism in capital markets, better link private sector profitability with sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and address financial integrity; f) Global tax architecture for equitable and inclusive sustainable development.”
From:
UN
To Tackle Climate Change, the Cycle of Crisis, Debt, and Underinvestment in the Global South Must End
“To bolster healthy democracies that can withstand the impacts of a changing climate, global financial infrastructure must change. The United States and other G7 nations must advocate for a transformative vision for IFI reform that pursues a core objective: enabling countries in the Global South—especially those most affected by climate change—to access and utilize a better quality and quantity of resources on the most equitable and least onerous terms possible. At the Paris summit, high-income countries should push for the following concrete vehicles to attain this goal.”
From:
Kate Donald, Frances Colón, and Anne Christianson, Center for American Progress
June 5 to 11, 2023.
Ajay Banga faces great expectations as he takes helm of World Bank
“On Friday, Banga takes over the largest global anti-poverty lender — which across its five wings last year did $114 billion in loans, investments, grants, and guarantees — as it’s in the midst of a potentially radical transformation. Debates rage about the trajectory of its ongoing reform process and whether the Washington-based institution will be capable of both fighting rising inequality and meeting clients’ increasingly urgent needs for money to deliver low-carbon economies and safeguard against worsening floods and droughts.”
From:
Shabtai Gold, Devex
World Bank’s New Chief Urges Faster Approvals and Focus on Climate Change
“The new leader of the World Bank said the lender needs to speed up project-approval times that now stretch for two to three years as it works to address trillion-dollar global challenges such as climate change and inequality. The bank needs to do more in less time, eliminating red tape and bureaucracy that slows its work, Ajay Banga said in a statement that was seen by Bloomberg News and shared with the staff on Friday, his first day as president.”
From:
Eric Martin, Bloomberg
World Bank’s new chief asks staff to ‘double down’ on development, climate efforts
“The World Bank’s new president Ajay Banga on Friday asked the lender’s 16,000 staff to “double down” on development and climate efforts as he seeks to accelerate the bank’s evolution to tackle the most pressing global problems. On his first day in the job, the former Mastercard (MA.N) CEO told staff in a memo seen by Reuters that he would seek to recruit each of them to work towards his vision “to create a world free from poverty on a livable planet.””
From:
David Lawder, Reuters
Ajay Banga Era Begins at the World Bank
“Ajay Banga officially became the 14th president of the World Bank on Friday and urged staff to join him in developing a “new playbook” for a global institution whose relevance has come into question in recent years. The ascension of Mr. Banga to be the next leader of the bank comes at a pivotal moment in its 77-year history. The global pandemic reversed decades of progress in poverty reduction, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to be a threat to economic stability and the World Bank is under new pressure to become a more ambitious player in the fight against climate change.”
From:
Alan Rappeport, New York Times
READOUT: Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen’s Meeting with Incoming World Bank President Ajay Banga
“Today, Secretary Yellen met with Ajay Banga at the Treasury Department ahead of his taking office as World Bank President on Friday. During their engagement, Secretary Yellen warmly welcomed Banga’s upcoming presidency and conveyed her strong desire for Treasury to continue close collaboration with Banga in building on the strong progress made so far on evolving multilateral development banks (MDBs). That includes continuing implementation of the recommendations of the G20 Capital Adequacy Framework review to get the most out of the Bank’s balance sheet, and improving and increasing the amount of private capital mobilized for our shared global development objectives and to refine the operating model to increase the responsiveness and agility of the bank. Secretary Yellen also reiterated the importance of the World Bank working more closely with its sister development banks.”
From:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Interview: Nothing off limits on World Bank reforms, Malpass says
“David Malpass will walk out of the World Bank on Thursday for the last time as president, happy with his four years at the helm of the global anti-poverty lender, but insisting the organization must “leave no stone unturned” in its reforms to better tackle rising poverty, high inflation, and the climate crisis.”
From:
Shabtai Gold, Devex
Ajay Banga Assumes World Bank Leadership: Advancing Climate Action And Disaster Debt Relief
“Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard, is poised to assume leadership at the World Bank this week, marking the potential start of a transformative era for the nearly 80-year-old institution. This transition presents a significant opportunity for renewed leadership and accelerated support in addressing poverty and climate change. By prioritizing critical reform initiatives early in his term, like debt suspension clauses, as well as securing additional resources, the World Bank can gain early momentum behind enhancing the role it plays in combating climate change while steadfastly upholding its primary mission of eradicating extreme poverty.”
From:
Michael Sheldrick and Global Citizen, Forbes
Exclusive: IMF, others should give $100 billion climate foreign-exchange guarantee, document says
“A top-level meeting in Paris next month will lay out a $100 billion plan to drive more money into climate and development finance in poorer countries by providing currency guarantees to investors, according to a document seen by Reuters. The plan, which has not previously been reported, was sent to the world’s governments ahead of the “Summit for a New Global Financing Pact” in Paris in June by the Bridgetown Initiative spearheaded by Barbados leader Mia Mottley.”
From:
Simon Jessop and Marc Jones, Reuters
Debt Crisis Looms for Poorer Nations Most Vulnerable to Climate Change
“One option would be for multilateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to step in as guarantors of projects to allow private investors to get involved without taking on so much risk. “We need to focus on how to drive more private sector climate finance mobilization,” said Norbert Ling, ESG Credit Portfolio Manager at Invesco Asset Management in Singapore. “The role of multilateral development banks in scaling up climate finance is strong, they can de-risk projects for the private sector.””
From:
Antony Sguazzin, Ronojoy Mazumdar and Prinesha Naidoo, Bloomberg
African Development Bank driving innovation to scale up climate adaptation
“Innovative approaches and solutions will be critical to scale up adaptation efforts across the African continent. This includes the African Development Bank-supported Adaptation Benefit Mechanism and the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program. The latter is a joint initiative between the Bank and the Global Center on Adaptation.”
From:
AfDB
Once again, IDA steps up with flexibility and resources amid crises
“So once again, IDA is stepping up to the challenge. The World Bank Board just approved the recommendation to set up the IDA Crisis Facility, which will scale up support for the world’s poorest countries. It will help address worsening development challenges due to the overlapping global crises, particularly food insecurity and extreme climate events. In the spirit of global solidarity that underpins IDA, it will also join international efforts to drive recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine, and address impacts of the conflict in neighboring Moldova—home to an influx of Ukrainian refugees.”
From:
Akihiko Nishio, World Bank
The latest reform updates and announcements from the multilateral development banks.
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