Dear colleagues,
Thank you very much for your support to the first global database on PDBs and DFIs. The development financing research program of Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University (INSE) at Peking University and French Development Agency (Agence Française de Développement, AFD) are glad to jointly share with you our most recent update.
To fulfill the development potential of PDBs and DFIs, it is important to systematically identify these public financial institutions and collect relevant data on basic profile and financial indicators. The development financing research program of INSE initiated to build the world's first development financing institution database in September 2017.
Recognizing INSE's pilot effort, French Development Agency, aims to identify those that could form a world coalition to emphasize the importance of incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the corporate strategies of PDBs and DFIs. On that basis, the INSE and the AFD have collaborated to build on the INSE's pilot effort to strengthen first ever comprehensive database on PDBs and DFIs with rigorous criteria and methodologies.
In the first quarter of 2023, the Public Development Banks (PDBs) and Development Financing Institutions (DFIs) database updates the total assets of PDBs and DFIs for the fiscal year 2021 (FY21) and releases the time-series data of total assets for the past four fiscal years 2018-2021. Currently, the PDBs and DFIs database includes 528 PDBs and DFIs from 155 countries and economies, among which 333 PDBs and DFIs disclose the data on total assets of FY2021 which add up to 22.4 trillion dollars.
Our data collection method combines natural language processing and manual data collection, with rigorous quality control. To collect publicly available financial data as comprehensively and accurately as possible, we have conducted three rounds of quality control, including a cross-checking, a double-checking and final verification by research specialists, a peer senior researcher and co-principal investigators from the Institute of New Structural Economics and French Development Agency respectively.
From 2018 to 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic dragged the global economy into a recession. During the economic downturn, commercial banks and private capital usually act in a procyclical manner. In contrast to the procyclical behavior of private capital, PDBs and DFIs may play an important countercyclical role during periods of financial instability (Galindo & Pannzia, 2018). Our time-series data may help to conduct a large-N regression analysis to test whether and why PDBs and DFIs play a countercyclical role during the recent global pandemic crisis.
Moving to the next stage, we will continue to update the list of PDBs and DFIs, as well as collect financial indicators of PDBs and DFIs for the fiscal year 2021, including total equity, total liabilities, net income, net interest revenue, and profit before tax.
We welcome feedback from academia, policymakers, practitioners from PDBs and DFIs, and other stakeholders to provide constructive suggestions and fill gaps in the database.
Please contact us at nsedfi@nsd.pku.edu.cn.