Multilateral Development Banks Welcome G20 Roadmap for MDB Reform

RIO DE JANEIRO (19 November 2024) — The Heads of 10 multilateral development banks (MDBs) welcomed today the endorsement by G20 Leaders of the G20 Roadmap toward Better, Bigger, and More Effective MDBs. The Roadmap outlines a comprehensive vision for continuing to reform MDBs to better address regional and global challenges, create more jobs and opportunities, and support countries to accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The MDB Roadmap builds on the call by G20 Leaders in New Delhi last year and fulfills a priority of the G20 Brazilian presidency. The G20 document outlines recommendations to increase MDB financing capacity and maximize their impact. Importantly, the Roadmap encourages development banks to further work “as a system”, engaging more effectively with governments, national and subnational development banks, and the private sector, among others.

The Heads of MDBs Group engaged closely with Brazil’s G20 presidency to leverage extensive work already done by MDBs. This includes the publication of a Viewpoint Note by MDBs in April 2024 outlining 16 concrete deliverables in priority areas. The note reflected an unprecedented level of collaboration among institutions and led to several milestones over the past year. Fourteen of the note’s deliverables were incorporated into the G20 Roadmap. MDBs also contributed to the Roadmap’s prioritization, outlining short-term and medium-term actions to sequence its implementation.

The MDB Heads Group also highlighted some of the transformative accomplishments made this year:

• Reached their collective goal of increasing lending headroom by around $400 billion over the next 10 years. 

• Increased MDBs climate finance lending to a record high of $75 billion for low- and middle-income countries and $50 billion for high-income countries in 2023, while private finance mobilized by MDBs nearly doubled to $101 billion from 2022.

• Enhanced their collective climate financing estimates for low- and middle-income countries to reach $120 billion by 2030, up 60% from 2023, complemented by another estimated $50 billion for high-income countries.

• Released the MDBs common approach to measuring climate results and a note on their common understanding and way forward on country platforms.

• Launched a cofinancing portal with opportunities to increase partnerships in 125 projects worth over $95 billion.

• Released two new publications through the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database (GEMs) Consortium with more granular statistics, providing investors further insights on credit risk in emerging markets and developing economies.

• Enhanced the harmonization of procurement practices to reduce transaction costs and improve the efficiency and sustainability of supply chains, while advancing efforts to expand the 13 current Mutual Reliance Agreements in procurement among MDBs.

• Advanced the work to catalyze private sector mobilization by scaling up local currency financing and hedging instruments.

• Issued hybrid capital offerings and portfolio guarantees to increase lending capacity and build resilience, and advanced a pioneering proposal for SDR channeling through MDBs.

For a full list on the progress on the Viewpoint Note deliverables see: Viewpoint Note implementation table.

To build on this year’s momentum, and informed by the G20 Roadmap and its prioritization of recommendations, MDBs will advance in the implementation of their reform agenda and engage with the G20 South African presidency to track progress, leveraging existing reporting mechanisms and in alignment with their respective mandates and governance frameworks.

The role of chair of the Heads of MDBs Group will be passed on 2 December 2024 from the Inter-American Development Bank to the Council of Europe Development Bank.

The Heads of MDBs Group thanks President Ilan Goldfajn of the Inter-American Development Bank for his commendable leadership and dedication as Chair of the Group.