Was the 2011 hit song by Carly Rae Jepsen “Call Me Maybe” written about development finance?
It’s unlikely, but here at Devex we can’t help but see the connection — especially in this key moment for multilateral development banks, with a giant push underway to reform them so that they can get more money to countries in need in this era of multiple overlapping crises.
Still, you’ll soon have the hit tune stuck in your head, and, we promise, a deeper understanding of the neglected but important issue of callable capital, which helps stabilize the entire development finance system. Callable capital also underpins a landmark report to the Group of 20 earlier this year which laid out a plan for increasing MDB lending by hundreds of billions of dollars.