KEY CONCLUSIONS:
- Development banks need change along with the rest of the world
“It is innovation of the banks that really matters. I believe that it needs a really high level of transparency because there is indeed some misunderstanding as to what these development banks and multilateral financial institutions in fact are. Transparency is just what it needs for private banks to be willing to cooperate,” said Nikolay Tsekhomskiy, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank).
“We have a very interesting time for development banks now. <...> It is not a time that requires a lot of money to be invested in conventional projects but rather a time that calls for search of new ways of interaction with commercial banks,” said Dmitriy Pankin, Chairman of the Management Board, Eurasian Development Bank (EDB).
- Development banks should help to create favourable conditions for investment
“The MDBs have a role to fulfil. <...> They need to work on their framework conditions within the countries where they would like to execute their approaches. These two conditions, I think, need to be fulfilled,” said Jörg Gasser, State Secretary for International Financial Matters, Federal Department of Finance of the Swiss Confederation.
CHALLENGES:
- Limited number of appealing investment cases
“The biggest challenge from our perspective as IFC is that in a hundred-odd countries that we work on around the world there is really the lack of financeable projects,” said Tomasz Telma, Director for Europe and Central Asia, International Finance Corporation.
Ineffective management, including at the government level
“I believe that effective public administration in the country we provide our funds to is a serious and important matter. We have many examples when we launched an investment project, signed a contract, and nothing happens. It takes months, years to launch a project and start spending money,” said Dmitriy Pankin, Chairman of the Management Board, Eurasian Development Bank (EDB).
SOLUTIONS:
- Creating an ecosystem around investment projects
“We try to de-risk the environment of the project to some extent, so that we can invest more, we can bring more money into either the country or the projects. A lot of the time that we spend, we essentially spend not on the project itself, but structuring everything around it,” said Gerard Lopez, Chairman of the Board, RISE Capital.
“We created a special unit which will help to set up projects <...> that, knowing the agenda of multilateral banks, would be suitable for them to invest, co-invest with us. At the same time, we also understand that with long-term projects we have in Russia the biggest problem is quality. Therefore, we set up special functions to monitor these projects,” Nikolay Tsekhomskiy, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank).
- Use of the blockchain technology
“We do strongly believe in blockchain. We believe that this is really a revolutionary technology which can substantially enhance transparency in the country <...> Transparency is something that we really need for multilateral institutions to invest in this country. Therefore, I think it will be our mutual goal and interest to bring this technology, to bring this new infrastructure into developing countries,” said Nikolay Tsekhomskiy, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board, Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank).
- Enhancing the dialogue between the public and private sectors
“We could exploit the special relationship between the multilateral and the member government to enhance an effective public sector – private sector dialogue, mobilise resources and therefore be able to look and to prioritise the pipeline, and be ready to bring the right resources at the right opportunity,” said Robin Phillips, Co-Head of Global Banking, HSBC Bank.