The third edition of the Finance in Common Summit (FICS), organized in Abidjan, embedded on October 18th an international research seminar releasing key updates from the FICS research pillar. The seminar was organized around four panels, each of them highlighting academic and policy papers providing major milestones to know Public Development Banks (PDBs) better. This research provides concrete, evidence-based propositions to acknowledge the theory of change supported by the "Finance in Common" coalition.
Globally, an updated vesrsion of the database on Public Development Banks was released. It displays an updated list and characteristics of the 522 PDBs worldwide identified so far, representing more than 23 trillion USD of assets. A new feature of the database this year is the identification, for every PDB, of each policy area in which it is active. For instance, the main mandates pursued by PDBs are SME financing (81% of all PDBs), Infrastructure (65%), and Industrial sector development (64%). In addition, for the first time, the database now provides financial figures collected from the 350 PDB's published accounts.
Besides this, the Research Conference drew lessons on:
- How PDBs are the government's financial arm, since they serve national public policies
- How PDBs can reinforce their financial architecture, which will allow them to fulfill their public mandate
- How PDBs can further align with the Paris Climate Agreement and the SDGs, exploring new frontiers like artificial intelligence
- How African PDBs are also catchiung up in their green strategies
Building on the recent researches demonstrating that PDBs no longer constitute a marginal wing of finance, but play a key role and create the conditions for sustainable solutions to emerge at scale, various public policy recommendations for PDBs and decision makers were made.
Click here to read the complete conclusions from the Research and and its policy recommendations.