Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance representatives participated in the 2021 OECD Blended Finance and Impact week in February 2021. In a virtual discussion, titled “Unleashing sustainable investments: Insights from the Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) report”, participants highlighted a range of proposals that would allow the private finance sector and public sector to collaborate more effectively to unlock greater investments for the SDGs. The 64 bold recommendations published in the report Renewed, Recharged and Reinforced: urgent action to harmonize and scale sustainable finance by the GISD Alliance provided the basis for the discussion.

“The Covid crisis has amplified the gap of funding to the frontier markets, and we are not driving capital deep enough to where it needs to go to fulfill the SDGs,” said Jay Collins (Citigroup).

In this regard, blended finance could be an important tool to mobilize private capital. Eva Lövgren (Sida) highlighted that “all actors in the public sector, the development sector, regulatory bodies, and the private sector need to work together for making more financial capital available for the developing markets.”

GISD Alliance representatives stressed the need to scale up investment and to increase the number of bankable projects. 

“The missing pieces of the puzzle,” underscored Navid Hanif (DESA), “are innovative instruments that clearly capture the risks while setting the right incentives for the public and private sector, and human capacity to manage and govern projects." 

In addition, Andre Wepener (Investec) pointed to the need for further alignment of regulatory frameworks. Daniel Hanna (Standard Chartered) emphasized that “sharing information in a digestible format is critical to eliminate the gap between actual and perceived risk”. Building trust through collaboration would be essential to address growing challenges and enhance sustainable development. The GISD Alliance will continue to engage relevant stakeholders on these topics. 

The panel discussion was followed by a fireside chat moderated by Adva Saldinger (Devex), with Scott A. Mather (PIMCO) and Caroline Wellemans (European Commission).