Deeply intertwined challenges—poverty, pandemics, climate change, debt, conflict, food insecurity, and fragility—are eroding decades of hard-won development progress; the world is looking to us for solutions.
We are digging deep to boost our lending capacity, finding ways to leverage callable capital, and creating new mechanisms like hybrid capital that could unlock untold resources to deliver results.
This urgency motivates us to write a new playbook that will drive impactful development and lead to a better quality of life for people everywhere. Pandemics and climate change don’t respect lines on a map. If we fail to work together to address these crises, we all lose.
Our approach must be inclusive of everyone, including women, young people, and others too often left behind. It must be resilient to shocks, including climate and biodiversity catastrophes, pandemics, and fragility. And it must be sustainable—through economic growth, human development, fiscal and debt management, food security, and access to clean air, water, and affordable energy.
To help countries achieve these goals and address their most urgent development needs, we offer innovative solutions that can be implemented at scale to maximize impact. Through our knowledge and research, we help countries make informed, impactful decisions. Central to these efforts are our partnerships and convening power, which further extend our reach as we work to realize our shared vision.
Under the umbrella of our Evolution Roadmap, we are working to become a better Bank. We will become more efficient and do more in less time—incentivizing output, not input. Keeping focus on how many girls are in school, how many jobs are created, how many tons of carbon dioxide emissions are avoided, and how many private sector dollars are mobilized.
We are digging deep to boost our lending capacity, finding ways to leverage callable capital, and creating new mechanisms like hybrid capital that could unlock untold resources to deliver results. We want to expand and evolve concessional financing to help more low-income countries achieve their development goals and while thinking creatively about how to encourage cooperation across borders and tackle shared challenges.
As we face a new era in development, we remain committed to creating a world free of poverty on a livable planet.
Ajay Banga
President of the World Bank Group
and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors
Over the past year, the World Bank Group Executive Directors have engaged with Bank Group leadership about persisting global crises and the urgent need to restore progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. More than 574 million people are projected to be living in extreme poverty by 2030, most of them in Africa. More broadly, nearly half the world—over 3 billion people—lives on less than $6.85 per day. Spillover effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and extreme climate events are among the major issues on which the Executive Directors led Bank Group interventions to support countries, including a focus on opportunities for women and young people. From July 2022 to June 2023, support from the Bank Group for developing countries totaled $122.9 billion, including $38.6 billion from IBRD, $34.2 billion from IDA, $43.7 billion (including mobilization) from IFC, and $6.4 billion in guarantees from MIGA.
Seated (from left to right):
Erivaldo Gomes, Brazil; Cecilia Nahon, Argentina; Ayanda Dlodlo, South Africa; Dominique Favre, Switzerland; Junhong Chang, China - Co-Dean; Koen Davidse, The Netherlands – Dean; Khalid Bawazier, Saudi Arabia; Adriana Kugler, United States; Matteo Bugamelli, Italy; Ernesto Acevedo, Mexico; Takashi Miyahara, Japan; Lene Lind, Norway
Standing (From Left to Right):
Wempi Saputra, Indonesia; Parameswaran Iyer, India; Mansour Alshamali, Kuwait; Michael Krake, Germany; Katharine Rechico, Canada; Roman Marshavin, Russian Federation; Velavan Gnanendran, United Kingdom; Il-Young Park, Korea; Nathalie Francken, Belgium (MIGA Director and Bank/IFC Alternate Director); Naveed Baloch, Pakistan; Abdoul Salam Bello, Niger; Arnaud Buissé, France
Absent: Floribert Ngaruko, Burundi
At the Annual Meetings in October 2022, Development Committee members asked the Bank Group to review its vision, mission, and operating and financial models to enhance the institution’s capacity to respond to global challenges. In response, the Bank Group created the Evolution Roadmap, with the aim of better addressing the scale of challenges facing the world today. The Roadmap provides a basis for Bank Group management and the Board to discuss priorities for the institution’s evolution and begin to implement collective reform.
Led by the Boards of Executive Directors in partnership with management, the Evolution Roadmap gained momentum this year. At the 2023 Spring Meetings, Governors at the Development Committee commended the Bank Group for identifying measures to increase financial capacity by roughly $50 billion over the next 10 years and discussed priorities to further strengthen the institution for the next phase of the Roadmap process ahead of the October 2023 Annual Meetings in Marrakech.
The important work of the Evolution comes as the World Bank Group continues to respond at record pace, scale, and impact to help countries address compounding crises and increasingly complex development challenges. In April 2022, the Bank Group outlined the Global Crisis Response Framework, which focused on responding to food insecurity, protecting people and preserving jobs, boosting resilience, and strengthening policies, institutions, and investments to build back better. Between April 2022 and June 2023, the Bank Group provided unprecedented crisis financing of $171.6 billion, including $53.1 billion from IBRD, $51.8 billion from IDA, $57.6 billion from IFC, and $9.1 billion in guarantees from MIGA.
In addition to its impact on food security, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated trends in energy access, international trade, and other major sectors. Recognizing the invasion’s potentially long-term consequences, the Board approved several operations to help restore and improve access to essential health care, provide financial protection for the Ukrainian people, and repair Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. To date, the World Bank Group has mobilized over $37.5 billion in emergency financing for Ukraine, including IBRD and IDA loans, IBRD loans guaranteed by partners, donor grants, short- and long-term IFC financing, and MIGA guarantees.
Climate action remains a crucial global priority. The Executive Directors welcome the efforts the Bank Group has made as the world’s largest multilateral provider of climate finance for developing countries by mobilizing more public and private finance. The Executive Directors are encouraged that, in addition to work combining country diagnostics, policy advice, financing, and scalable mechanisms to mobilize funding, the World Bank is on track to align 100 percent of new operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement from July 1, 2023. For IFC and MIGA, 85 percent of new operations will be aligned starting July 1, 2023, and 100 percent from July 1, 2025.
The world witnessed devastating natural disasters this year that caused tragic losses of life and widespread destruction. The earthquakes in Türkiye are among the most recent events to which the Bank Group has responded. The Executive Directors continue to recognize the hardships encountered in fragile and conflict-affected situations around the world, including the challenges and complexities of migration, as discussed in this year’s World Development Report. The Executive Directors commend the ongoing and coordinated efforts by the World Bank, IFC, and MIGA to swiftly address fragility and disasters, including by leveraging the IDA Private Sector Window and Contingency Emergency Response Components in operations. The Board also recently approved the establishment of an IDA Crisis Facility, which will boost support for the world’s poorest countries in tackling urgent development challenges, particularly food security and climate change. In addition to the many operations and country engagements the Board discussed and approved this year, Executive Directors also visited operations in several client countries. In February and May 2023, Board members traveled to Belize, Guatemala, Panama, the Republic of Congo, and São Tomé and Príncipe. During these missions, the Executive Directors engaged with key government entities, the private sector, civil society, and donor stakeholders and met with Bank Group staff and the people who have benefited from these operations.
As the Bank Group’s leadership and Boards of Directors prepare for the October 2023 Annual Meetings in Marrakech, the Executive Directors and management are moving forward on the Evolution Roadmap. The Executive Directors extend their sincere gratitude to David Malpass for his strong and steadfast leadership of the World Bank Group through a historically challenging period. His commitment to the mission, diversity and inclusion, debt transparency and sustainability, and country-level development outcomes have seen the institution deliver record commitments for development. The Board warmly welcomes his successor, Ajay Banga, as the 14th President of the World Bank Group. Finally, the Executive Directors extend their thanks to all staff for their tireless dedication and hard work in these challenging times. Thanks to them, the World Bank Group continues to make a difference in the lives of many who deserve a life in dignity.
MESSAGE FROM
HIROSHI MATANO
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
In a year when multiple global crises posed an unprecedented threat to economic development, MIGA rose to the challenge with a record amount of new guarantees to promote cross-border investment into developing countries. MIGA delivered a program of $6.4 billion in guarantees, the most in a year since the Agency was founded 35 years ago. We also celebrated our 1,000th project.
Poverty, development, and climate change must be tackled together. MIGA remains committed to mitigating and adapting to climate change and its impact.
Achieving our goals— whether they involve climate, fragility and conflict, crises, digitalization, or gender—will continue to require private capital enabling and private capital mobilization; that is, redirecting capital to the nations that need it the most.
Working with clients and partners, we leveraged $8.6 billion in total financing from private and public sources through guarantees to cross-border private investors in developing countries. Of our gross issuances
27 percent
supported projects in international Development Association (lower-income) countries;
19 percent
19 percent went to fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS); and
28 percent
of our guaranteed investment contributed to climate change adaptation or mitigation. A total of $1.5 billion went to climate finance, up from $1.1 billion in FY22.
In those priority areas, MIGA demonstrated support for investments and lending for the countries that need it most.
Both the immediate and ongoing impacts of these guarantees are significant. MIGA guarantees in FY23 are expected to help create 8,774 jobs and enable $2.6 billion in loans, including for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), women-owned and women-led businesses, and climate-related activities. In addition, MIGA projects connected 55 million people to mobile telephone networks and 40 million to the internet.
In addition to the 40 projects in 29 countries on MIGA’s own account, there was one supported by two MIGA-administered trust funds.
Demand for MIGA’s guarantee coverage—including both our political risk insurance products and our credit enhancement (non-honoring) products—grew. In addition, we issued our first trade finance guarantee. Trade finance insurance became all the more important as global trade slowed and many nations embraced protectionist policies.
MIGA’s unique position and offerings enable us to bridge the public and private sectors. While our insurance solutions differ in how they work, they all perform a common function that is vital to development: encouraging and enabling private investors by managing and mitigating risk. In addition, we bring in the private sector in another way by using the reinsurance market. During FY23, we ceded $5 billion of new business to our reinsurance partners, in line with our strategy of preserving capital to support growth. By the end of the fiscal year, 65 percent of our portfolio was reinsured, up from 62 percent a year earlier, adding up to a record ceded exposure of well over $18 billion.
As during the COVID-19 pandemic, in FY23 MIGA acted nimbly when crisis arose. It employed multiple solutions during the year to assist the embattled people of Ukraine. This effort included joining forces with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to cover trade finance risk to ensure the flow of essential drugs, food, fuel, and fertilizer continued to the war-torn nation. MIGA also issued guarantees to international banks to support liquidity and working capital for small businesses in Ukraine and established the Support for Ukraine’s Reconstruction and Economy (SURE) Trust Fund to enable issuance of additional guarantees. Launched with a critical $23 million anchor contribution from Japan, and with more contributions in the pipeline, the SURE Trust Fund is expected to grow.
Another crisis during the year, a massive earthquake, caused nearly 60,000 deaths in Türkiye and Syria in February. We are proud that MIGA-supported hospitals, built to be resistant to such disasters, stood up well. Two such hospitals were near the epicenter yet withstood the earthquake with little damage, leaving them fully operational to care for survivors. Since the earthquake, MIGA has returned to Türkiye with an additional $134 million guarantee to support completion of a sixth modern health care facility. The investment will build additional resilience to future disasters in the region.
MIGA also marked a milestone in its support for women. With a guarantee of up to $100 million to Banco Santander in Argentina that set aside funds for loans to women-owned and women-led businesses, MIGA reached $1.2 billion in total lending commitments to this underserved segment of the population. The exclusion of half of a country’s population from full economic activity remains a barrier to growth and higher living standards in too many countries, and MIGA continues to earmark funds in projects it supports for women, a long-underfinanced group.
In addition, MIGA continued to promote gender equality through its eighth annual Gender Leadership Award, which was awarded to Claudia María González Arteaga, Chief Financial Officer at Bancóldex, for her tireless efforts to close gaps and create opportunities for businesswomen in Colombia. MIGA has signed two projects with Bancóldex to cover the risk of Non-Honoring of Financial Obligations by a State-Owned Enterprise.
Poverty, development, and climate change must be tackled together. MIGA remains committed to mitigating and adapting to climate change and its impact. We supported several major climate projects during the fiscal year, including one that involved partnering with Kube Energy, a Norwegian solar power innovator, to develop a 2.8-megawatt solar hybrid power plant in Somalia. In addition to delivering significant additional power capacity in a nation where less than half of residents have access to it, the Kube project demonstrated the potential for private sector investment in fragile and conflict-affected contexts through innovative business models.
Starting July 1, 2023, MIGA is committed to aligning 85 percent of its new projects with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, and 100 percent of these projects will be aligned starting July 1, 2025. MIGA’s Paris alignment assessment will consider each country’s pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development, and determine whether an activity advances, hinders, or is neutral when it comes to achieving progress toward the goals of the Paris Agreement.
And Paris alignment is just part of our commitment to the highest environmental and social performance standards. MIGA’s environmental and social sustainability policies are derived from our extensive experience insuring investments around the world. They are a powerful tool for identifying risks, reducing development costs, and improving project sustainability—benefiting affected communities and preserving the environment.
In Ethiopia, a country plagued by conflict, MIGA partnered with IFC and provided 10-year guarantees of $1 billion to support the rollout and operation of 4G and 5G telecommunications networks across the country. The project is a key part of the Ethiopian government’s plan to realize its digital potential and fits well with our ongoing efforts to promote digitalization in developing economies.
During the past year, MIGA supported its 1,000th project since inception: a non-honoring guarantee for $550 million covering a loan to the government of Senegal in support of investments in port infrastructure. MIGA is enabling the government of Senegal to pursue a key strategic priority by investing in developing a major commercial hub in the region.
Achieving our goals—whether they involve climate, fragility and conflict, crises, digitalization, or gender—will continue to require private capital enabling and private capital mobilization; that is, redirecting capital to the nations that need it the most.
Achieving these goals will also require strengthening our focus on the One World Bank Group approach, which requires coordinated engagement across Bank Group institutions.
And while most MIGA projects during the year took place in individual countries, they often delivered global public goods such as climate mitigation and resilience to pandemics, in addition to combating fragility, which if unchecked can spill over borders all too easily.
This aligns MIGA’s goals with the World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap, which is led by the Board and shareholders and seeks to better address global challenges like climate and fragility while remaining focused on poverty reduction and shared prosperity.
There is no shortage of development challenges for MIGA to tackle, but our dedicated staff remain focused on our mission of mobilizing private, cross-border investment that can deliver a significant blow to global poverty while continuing to spread inclusive prosperity on a livable planet.
I extend my heartfelt thanks to our clients and Board, who remain steadfast partners and continue to help us deliver results in every region of the globe.
Hiroshi Matano
Executive Vice President
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
