Norfund (Norway)
- Score:
- 33.1
- Position:
- 14 / 22 (Non-sovereign)
Overview
The Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries (Norfund), is the Norwegian development finance institution. It was established by the Norwegian Parliament in 1997 and it is owned entirely by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Norfund joined the European Development Finance Institutions Association (EDFI) in 2001.
Analysis
Norfund ranked 14th out of 22 non-sovereign DFIs with a score of 33.1. It is ranked the same place as in 2023, although its score has improved from 24.9. A key improvement since 2023 is Norfund’s new database, which enables a bulk download of disaggregated investment data, improving overall accessibility. Norfund also performed well on the new climate finance indicators and improved on some Core Information indicators. However, Norfund still does not publish to the IATI Standard, and some indicator scores declined in the ESG and Accountability to Communities and Financial Intermediaries components.
Norfund ranked 11th in the Core Information component, with 11.25 out of 20. This represents an improvement from 2023, when it placed 16th. As well as improvement on the accessibility indicator, progress in this component included new disclosures on unique identifiers, funding source, client description and approval date. However, Norfund failed on several indicators, including disclosure policy, description and objectives and E&S category. It dropped points for format of publication for many indicators due to not publishing to the IATI Standard.
Norfund came joint 14th in the Impact Management component, with a score of 7.25 out of 25. At the organisational level, its performance stayed the same as in 2023. Norfund scored on its approach to impact measurement, additionality and attribution, aligned impact standards and sector strategies. However, it continued to fall short on publishing evaluations and activity-level impact indicators including impact metrics and results. This time, it also failed to consistently disclose additionality statements.
In the ESG and Accountability to Communities component, Norfund ranked joint 16th with a score of 7.67 out of 30. In 2023 it came joint 15th with the same score. It continued to score 100 per cent for its E&S and project-level grievance (PGM) community disclosure policies. It also scored points for E&S global disclosure policy. However, it did not score for any other indicators in this component, including all project-level indicators, such as summary of E&S risks and assurance of community disclosure.
Norfund scored 6.95 out of 15 in the Financial Information component, ranking 3rd among non-sovereign portfolios, up from joint 9th in 2023. This improvement was in large part because of the introduction of climate finance indicators to this component, where Norfund performed well due to its new climate finance bulk download fields. It also saw progress on the currency of investment and repeat investment indicators. However, it continued to fall short on several others, including co-financing, concessionality, mobilisation, and instrument-specific disclosure.
Finally, Norfund ranked joint last in the Financial Intermediary (FI) Sub-Investments component, scoring 0 out of 10. This is a drop from 2023, when it was one of five non-sovereign DFIs to score for disclosing private equity fund sub-investments, which were not disclosed this time when doing the assessment.
Recommendations
- Norfund should create a disclosure/access to information policy in line with industry best practices and the DFI Transparency Tool.
- It should become an IATI publisher and disclose all investments to the IATI Standard.
- Norfund should disclose further Core Information data including client contact, E&S category, date of activity disclosure, signature date and last update date. It should consistently disclose the project description and objectives, sub-national location, sub-sector, total investment cost, and disbursement.
- Norfund should disclose a policy on the evaluation of its investments as well as publishing the evaluations that it conducts.
- It should disclose project-level Impact Management indicators, including activity indicators/metrics and results. It should consistently disclose project-level additionality statements.
- Norfund should develop an early disclosure policy covering, at a minimum, high risk projects and disclose investments in line with the policy. It should also disclose an explanation of project E&S risk categorisation.
- Norfund should create an independent accountability mechanism (IAM), following best practice examples and incorporate disclosure requirements for an IAM into existing policies.
- It should disclose project-level ESG and Accountability to Communities indicators, including summary of E&S risks and E&S documentation.
- It should provide assurance of community disclosure for investments when disclosure is required. It should also state the main shareholders of client companies as well as disclosing a beneficial ownership statement.
- Norfund should disclose project-level data on concessionality, mobilisation and other instrument-specific details (share of equity and loan tenor). It should consistently disclose for the co-financing indicator.
- It should disclose rationales for why climate finance has been counted for individual investments.
- Norfund should develop a policy for disclosing financial intermediary sub-investments in line with Publish What You Fund’s DFI Transparency Tool and resume disclosure of private equity sub-investments, as it has done in the past.
- It should consistently disclose the FI (bank) use of funds.