The air of self-congratulation at the World Bank annual meetings was unavoidable. Coming shortly on the back of record-breaking private capital mobilisation (PCM) figures, the focus of many meetings was on how the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) could double down on these increases. In short, the message was that the World Bank needs to do more to crowd in private finance, and to do it faster. Indeed, the emphasis on scalability appeared contagious. The need to scale and replicate development initiatives ran the gamut from innovative social projects in International Development Association (IDA) countries through aggregation and securitisation of non-sovereign assets. However, what was much less clear was where development impact – whether measured in terms of project results or market impacts – featured in these conversations. This blog unpacks the main takeaways from the Publish What You Fund team that attended the annual meetings.

Scaling and replicating private capital mobilisation

Prior to the annual meetings, the World Bank announced record-breaking PCM figures having mobilised $112 billion in FY26, a tripling of PCM volumes in the four years since FY22. These figures are remarkable; in the latest (2024) Mobilization of Private Finance by Multilateral Development Banks and Development Finance Institutions Joint Report[1] (hereafter Joint Report) all reporting institutions mobilised a total of $108 billion in middle- and low-income countries (MICs and LICs). Importantly, these figures have been achieved using the old MDB joint approach to calculating PCM, rather than the new methodology that is likely to produce larger reportable volumes. Much was made of the increase in guarantees issued by the World Bank – totalling $25 billion in FY26 – yet a lack of granularity in PCM reporting makes it impossible to discern what contribution this made to the PCM figures.

Praise for the World Bank’s PCM achievements was effusive. World Bank Group President Ajay Banga highlighted the record-breaking volumes on numerous occasions, while Bank management and Executive Directors lined up to add to the chorus of support. The United Kingdom’s delegation was similarly impressed, drawing vocal support from Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband at multiple events, as well as from Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office staff.

Despite the wide-ranging praise, the overall message concerning PCM was clear; the World Bank – and other MDBs and DFIs – needs to do yet more and do it faster. At a time when emerging market and developing economy (EMDE) domestic finances are strained by debt burdens, bilateral donor funds are shrinking or constrained, and concerns remain about the ability of IDA to achieve similar levels of commitments as those achieved in the IDA21 replenishment, private capital is viewed as increasingly central to plugging the growing financing gaps. Perspectives on how to achieve this goal of yet more PCM were remarkably unanimous; MDBs and DFIs need to do more to develop the pipeline of development projects, create the market conditions for private investment – including from domestic resources – and recycle their working capital by offloading credit risk to institutional investors, in the oft-repeated words of creating an asset class.

Attracting private investment to EMDEs requires investments to have suitable risk-return profiles. It was therefore encouraging to see significant attention paid to new data and disclosures from the Global Emerging Markets Risk Database (GEMS) that for the first time provide insight on credit spreads used to calculate returns. This data is central to addressing the elevated perception of risk that affects EMDEs and limits private investments. At the same time, there was much discussion of the role of aggregation – particularly through securitisations of the type that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other MDBs have pursued in the last two years – in attracting institutional investment that would ordinarily not invest in the ticket sizes and risk profiles of EMDE investments.

Private capital mobilisation and development impact

While PCM is increasingly viewed as the key to addressing development financing gaps, there is a risk that PCM begins to be treated as an end, rather than as a means of funding activities that will ultimately generate development impact. Indeed, notwithstanding a focus on “small AI” and a doubling-down on investing in sectors likely to generate jobs, one would be forgiven for having left Bangkok with the distinct impression that driving up PCM volumes had become something of a development impact in itself. Rumblings from the sidelines around development impact going missing were unmistakable, and have arguably increased in the time since.

Recent data – from both the World Bank and from the 2024 Joint Report – paint a clear picture about where PCM works (and is increasing) and where, to date, it doesn’t. The World Bank notes that PCM in LICs has been “maintained” between FY22 and FY26 – in other words, PCM has stagnated in the poorest economies. More starkly, the 2024 Joint Report showed an approximate 35% decline in PCM in LICs from the prior year. Set against a general trend of increasing total PCM volumes, it is increasingly clear that the tools deployed by the World Bank and other MDBs and DFIs are not effectively crowding private capital into the economies that are most in need of it. While it may not be possible to draw a direct line between a scarcity of private investment and increased development impact, we can confidently state that we would expect the additionality, and therefore impact, of MDB investments to be greatest in the markets with greatest need. In short, it is likely that an MDB investment in a LIC is more impactful than an equivalent investment in a middle-income country where private capital is more readily available.

The emphasis placed on originate-to-distribute business models and the transfer of credit risk to institutional investors arguably increases the risk that PCM is beginning to displace development impact as the central objective of MDBs. The majority of private investors are ultimately guided by the risk and return of investments; development impact is, at best, a secondary motivation. As pressure grows on MDBs to transfer more risk to institutional investors – in short, to create a new asset class – pressure may emerge on MDBs to originate less risky investments at the expense of development impact. As was made clear at an ODI Global event on the role of aggregation and intermediation, while the aggregation of assets can at once achieve the scale and risk profile that institutional investors need, it is not generally possible to aggregate/pool the riskiest assets into such structures. As such, the imperative to have a pipeline of assets that can in the future be aggregated and securitised could create perverse incentives for MDBs around risk and development impact.

Transparency of private capital mobilisation and development impact

Inadequate transparency from the World Bank Group (WBG) fundamentally limits the ability of stakeholders to address concerns surrounding the relationship between PCM and development impact. Despite continued references to the “One World Bank Group” approach that is unifying everything from operations across the public and private sector institutions to their respective independent accountability mechanisms, there remains a stark discrepancy in the transparency of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and IDA, and that of IFC.

PCM data has been incorporated into the new World Bank Scorecard through the “Total Private Capital Mobilized” indicator. However, while IDA and IBRD disclose disaggregated data for this indicator, the IFC and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) do not do so. Given the fact IFC consistently accounts for the majority of PCM generated by the WBG – IFC accounted for approximately 62.8% of the WBG’s PCM reported for MICs and LICs in the 2024 Joint Report – stakeholders are unable to understand what types of investments and in which geographies and sectors are mobilising private finance. The disclosure of granular PCM data is no longer unattainable; multiple MDBs including the Asian Development Bank, IDB Invest, and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean have begun disclosing project-level PCM data to varying extents, while numerous bilateral DFIs disclose disaggregated data through the OECD.

A similar picture emerges across other Scorecard indicators – while the IBRD and IDA disclose granular data, IFC does not. Although the IFC has made some progress in securing client consent to disclose AIMM indicators for some investments, the coverage is currently limited and the discretion given to clients to select indicators for disclosure limits comparability and standardisation across investments. The picture is yet more confounding when it comes to jobs. Despite being the most talked-about element of development impact at the annual meetings, the WBG have still not developed a methodology for the “More and Better Paid Jobs” indicator in the Scorecard. While appreciating the complexity in the indicator and the desire of the WBG to develop a methodology fit for purpose, it is concerning that there remains no methodology for the indicator two and a half years after the Scorecard was launched.

Project-level results are an important element of understanding the additionality of MDB investments and their development impact. The other element that is receiving increasing attention is the ways in which MDBs and DFIs create or shape markets – their market impact. Recent CGD analysis shows that while market impact features prominently in the mandates of many MDBs and DFIs, there is less evidence of how it is operationally prioritised and a lack of transparency around what market impact is achieved. If MDBs are to create the conditions where development finance is ultimately unnecessary, understanding their market impacts are key. At the same time, the development ecosystem would benefit from more systematic tracking of private institutional investment in EMDEs to understand progress towards the long-term objective of ultimately making development finance obsolete.

Finally, transparency around investment pricing and cost-effectiveness is still lacking. Despite IFC making some progress in disclosing the size of subsidy in blended finance operations, stakeholders are still unable to discern the way in which deals are structured and priced.

In summary, a lack of transparency around PCM, impact, and pricing makes it impossible for stakeholders to accurately understand what the broader implications of the renewed emphasis on increasing PCM are. Stakeholders need to be able to track PCM across investments, and to join it up with impact data – both project- and market-level – in addition to pricing and concessionality data to fully understand the potential trade-offs that are involved in the pursuit of PCM and an originate-to-distribute business model.

What needs to change?

The WBG needs to adopt best practice in the disclosure of PCM data, impact data, and pricing information. Precedents for transparency exist across each of these areas. MDBs and DFIs are increasingly disclosing project-level PCM data across private sector operations, while some progress has also been made in publishing non-sovereign impact data. While IFC has made some progress on impact transparency, it needs to move beyond client selection of Anticipated Impact Measurement and Monitoring (AIMM) indicators towards disclosure of a more standardised set of indicators. The AIMM system already contains the necessary indicators for major sectors, but disclosure has to date not followed. Similarly, IFC and other MDBs should systematically disclose data on expected and achieved market impacts of investments.  Transparency of pricing and deal structuring – particularly around blended finance projects – would support the goals of improving scalability and replicability of PCM-generating activities. Finally, greater transparency surrounding aggregation and securitisations, including through disclosure of the underlying assets in reference pools, can support further PCM of institutional investors.

Ultimately, the World Bank should not only be looking to scale and replicate within the institution but also across the markets in which it operates, and transparency is fundamental to supporting that mission. The phrase “data is collateral” was repeated often during the annual meetings. The World Bank must also recognise that data is mobilising, and act accordingly.

[1] The 2024 Joint Report was published in May 2026.