Complaints about a lack of transparency by development finance institutions are not new, but now there is a tool designed to help them improve based on research that dispels some of their typical arguments against disclosure.
The DFI Transparency Tool, developed by Publish What You Fund following two years of research that included the input of many DFIs, was released last week and it aims to provide a clear definition of what DFIs need to disclose and how they can do so.
The current level of disclosure among DFIs is “surprisingly low” and “most have quite a ways to go before they can claim to be operating in as transparent a way as possible,” said Rob Mosbacher, the former CEO at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the predecessor to the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, who also served as chair of the project advisory board for the DFI Transparency Initiative.