Maximizing Finance for Development

A high-profile panel on maximizing finance for development, with Dr. Kim, President Kagame of Rwanda, and the CEOs of Standard Chartered, the NZ Super Fund, and the Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) of India, was held at Annual Meetings. Key takeaways follow: 

President Kagame pointed out that the prosperity Rwanda needs cannot come from just the public or the private sector alone, and noted that only when they work together can they maximize finance for development.

Renu Sud Karnad of HDFC, agreed that the regulatory framework is often an obstacle for private investment. She explained that IFC was a founding shareholder of HDFC, and it was a leap of a faith as HDFC had no framework when they started. Subsequently, HDFC has built the housing finance market in India and helped create housing industry standards and regulations.

Adrian Orr of NZ Super Fund, indicated that there’s a “wall” of money that wants to get into “frontier” markets, but the two can’t meet at the moment. He applauded the World Bank Group’s leadership in acting as a clearinghouse for investment opportunities and in trying to stabilize regulatory frameworks and standardize the investment procurement framework. 

Bill Winters said that Standard Chartered, an investment bank founded in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, is focused on creating the facility to allow underlying businesses to grow and that their value is in catalyzing or bridging the portion of capital that allows an unfinanceable project to get financed.

Dr. Kim highlighted the imperative of maximizing finance to provide the crucial resources needed to finance the SDGs: Maximizing finance is the only chance that we have to provide enough resources to invest in infrastructure, transport, ICT, education and health and to make sure that everyone in the developing world can compete in the digital economy of the future.