G20 panel moots development banks' greater engagement with private sector

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

G20 to suggest a reforms blueprint for multilateral development banks (MDBs) has recommended enhancing their sustainable level of own-account non-concessional finance to $300 billion annually by 2030 among several other measures to make them more impactful. The concessional finance target is pegged at $90 billion annually.

The panel, co-chaired by leading economist and 15th finance commission chairman N K Singh and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, has called for greater engagement with the private sector. It has recommended MDBs should formally adopt a triple mandate of eliminating poverty, fostering shared prosperity, and incorporating global public goods and closely related transboundary challenges explicitly in their mission statement, sources aware of the development told ET.

In its suggestions to the G20, it has mooted a Global Challenges Funding mechanism to take advantage of the non-sovereign donors. The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors are likely to deliberate the panel's recommendations at their upcoming meeting in Gujarat's Gandhinagar on July 17-18.

The panel has been set up under India's G20 presidency with a mandate to develop a road map for an updated MDB ecosystem that would include a clearly articulated vision, incentive structure, operational approaches and financial capacity. It would evaluate estimates of the finance scale needed to and from the MDBs and propose mechanisms for coordination among them, providing clear milestones and firm timelines.