AsDB – non-sovereign
- Score:
- 60.3
- Position:
- 1 / 22 (Non-sovereign)
Overview
Asian Development Bank (AsDB) promotes resilience and sustainability across the Asia-Pacific region. Its non-sovereign portfolio provides non-concessional and concessional loans, equity investments, loan guarantees, grants, and technical assistance to the private sector in lower and middle-income countries. AsDB publishes to the IATI Standard. It was established in 1966.
Analysis
Overall, AsDB’s non-sovereign portfolio came top of the 22 non-sovereign portfolios assessed, scoring 60.3. This marks a significant improvement from 2023, where it ranked 3rd with a score of 46.5. It performed particularly strongly for the Financial Information and ESG and Accountability to Communities components, ranking 1st in both. The main reason for improved performance is AsDB’s new bulk download file for non-sovereign activities and the publication of all sampled projects to IATI, which was not the case in 2023.
In the Core Information component, AsDB ranked 6th with a score of 14.67 out of 20, improving slightly from its position at 7th in 2023. Its new bulk download and improved IATI publication increased its score significantly. AsDB disclosed data for sixteen of the seventeen indicators. However, it continued to fail on domicile, disbursement, client contact, disclosure date and signature date.
AsDB ranked 2nd in the Impact Management component, scoring 17.75 out of 25 and maintaining its 2023 position. It improved by consistently publishing activity indicators/metrics to IATI. The rest of the indicators stayed the same. AsDB scored no points for the results indicator because it did not consistently disclose target, baselines and actuals.
In the ESG and Accountability to Communities component, AsDB came 1st place with a score of 19.25 out of 30, improving from its position at 2nd in 2023. It scored 100 per cent for all organisational-level indicators due to progress in its independent accountability mechanism (IAM) community disclosure policy. At the project-level, its performance stayed the same across all indicators as in 2023. It only scored points for providing a summary of environmental and social (E&S) risks, identifying the E&S standards triggered, disclosing what documentation was produced, stating whether disclosure to project-affected people was required, and indicating the presence of the independent accountability mechanism (IAM) on the project webpage.
AsDB also ranked highest in the Financial Information component, scoring 7.33 out of 15 and improving from its joint 4th position in 2023. It lost points for not providing detailed co-financing data, an area where it had been the only non-sovereign DFI to score in 2023. It improved from 2023 by disclosing share of equity. The main improvement was driven by the new climate finance indicators, on which AsDB achieved a 100 per cent score.
Finally, AsDB ranked joint 8th in the Financial Intermediaries and Sub-Investments component, with a score of 1.25 out of 10. Although it dropped from its position as joint 7th in 2023, AsDB’s performance across these indicators stayed the same. It only scored points on the FI (bank) use of funds indicator.
Recommendations
- AsDB should review its disclosure policy according to current best practice.
- To achieve full marks in the Core Information component at the project level, it should ensure consistent disclosure of sub-national location to IATI, publish domicile, client contact, disclosure date and signature date, and consistently disclose disbursement data both to IATI and on its web portal.
- AsDB should explain its approach to impact attribution. It should also publish results for all investments, including baselines, target, and actuals.
- It should publish E&S documents for all investments, including the minimum documentation for higher risk projects.
- AsDB should provide assurance of community disclosure for investments when disclosure is required, as well as a beneficial ownership statement and identification of the main shareholders of the client company.
- For Financial Information, AsDB should disclose repeat investment and how much private finance was mobilised. It should consistently disclose detailed co-financing data, concessionality data, and loan tenor.
- AsDB should create a policy for the disclosure of FI sub-investments in line with Publish What You Fund’s DFI Transparency Tool and define use of funds (banks) at the policy level.