The roundtable event, to be held in Brussels, Belgium, organised by ECDPM with the Center for Global Development in Europe, will bring together analysts, development finance practitioners, stakeholders from a spectrum of development finance institutions, and policymakers with a durable public and private finance experience for a series of brief, focused presentations and a constructive, curated discussion.
The Addis Ababa Action Agenda mentions 'private sector' as many times as it mentions 'international cooperation.' This exemplifies the growing consensus that delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a strong engagement of the private sector. However, investors are ofen reluctant to work in developing countries because of perceived risks. As a result, cost and risk-sharing public mechanisms have become an important means to leverage private finance for frontier markets.
These new priorities imply challenging new questions for policymakers, including:
- Are current approaches effective and sufficient?
- What has been the experience so far?
- What should be the role of development finance institutions (DFIs) to incentivise the private sector and mitigate risk?
- Are the risk-sharing and mitigation instruments in place adequate, do they need to be scaled up, or do we need to explore new contracts and incentive structures?
The event will:
- Highlight the risk-sharing instruments (including equity stakes, concessional debt financing, and guarantees) that DFIs use to 'crowd in' investment and mitigate risk for the private sector.
- Challenge institutions to investigate new and different ways to use public development capital to work with the private sector.
