Photo is from GISD's side event to the 2023 WBG-IMF Spring Meetings

An in-person side event to the 2024 WBG-IMF Spring Meetings
Washington DC

Despite some progress, blended finance has to date not been successful in catalyzing private investment at the scale required. Estimates show that approximately $213 billion[1] in capital has been mobilized by blended finance, far below the trillions projected to be unlocked a decade ago. In addition, only a small proportion of this mobilized capital has been channeled to least developed countries (LDCs). A new approach to blended finance is needed to enhance private capital mobilization for sustainable development.

The United Nations’ upcoming fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in 2025 offers a unique opportunity to address challenges to the scaling of private capital for sustainable development. Ahead of the Conference, the GISD Alliance has launched a workstream on “Enhancing private capital mobilization through blended finance and the MDB evolution agenda”.

This workstream will build on the recommendations that GISD has produced for MDBs and DFIs to scale private capital mobilization in collaboration with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), and the Investor Leadership Network (ILN). It will also build on the joint Call to Action to heads of states, policymakers and multilateral development bank (MDB) officials  put forth by leading private sector coalitions, including the GISD Alliance, ahead of COP28

The workstream by GISD Alliance is an opportunity to turn these recommendations into action, through dialogue with stakeholders. It will bring together private and public sector actors to showcase concrete examples of successful private capital mobilization in developing countries over the last decade with an in-depth analysis of what worked. It will also examine cases where blended finance approaches have not produced the desired results. In doing so, the workstream will uncover impediments that have limited the scale and reach of blended finance transactions to arrive at concrete solutions to help overcome them.

The GISD Alliance will convene key actors at the 2024 WBG-IMF Spring Meetings for a (closed) expert dialogue to arrive at an understanding of the challenges that hinder substantially scaling up blended finance transactions and identify solutions to spur actions. The recommendations emerging from this dialogue will contribute to the preparatory process of the Fourth International Conference on FfD.