Are development finance institutions now more valuable for their data than their money? Maybe, according to an interview with Gary Forster, chief executive officer of transparency organization Publish What You Fund, speaking at Casa Devex, our event taking place alongside the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, Spain.
Forster's organization has just conducted a major survey of transparency among international financial institutions, and it found that multilateral development banks were doing significantly better than DFIs on the issue.
That's a problem for many reasons, he said, not least because one of the principal topics of FfD4 is private capital mobilization — persuading private investors to commit money to the global south — and private investors need data from DFIs to understand where the investment opportunities actually are.
About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
