Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said the support extended by multilateral agencies to clean energy transition projects of developing economies is crucial to encourage the flow of private sector investments, according to a statement released by the Department of Finance over the weekend.
Dominguez said the meticulous planning and vetting done by multilateral institutions before extending assistance to projects will build confidence among private investors in mobilizing funds to participate in the resource-intensive programs of developing countries to transition to clean energy.
“The role of the multilateral agencies is very crucial in this part. The multilateral agencies actually are agents of governments. All of us as ministers sit as governors in Asian Development Bank (ADB) or World Bank (WB) or the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank (AIIB). It is very important that these multilateral agencies actually begin the projects that will allow the private sector to take part, I believe, and give them confidence that these projects have been studied very well, have been vetted by the multilateral agencies,” Dominguez said during the 4th High-Level Ministerial Dialogue on Long-Term Finance held in Glasgow last November 3.
The ministerial dialogue is part of the series of high-level meetings held during the ongoing 26th United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) hosted this year by the United Kingdom (UK) in partnership with Italy.
Dominguez, who heads the Philippine delegation this year to the UN COP26, said the support by multilateral institutions such as the WB, ADB and AIIB will “open the doors for funds from the private sector to flow into actual projects on the ground.”
His statements were in response to a query by Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer of the UK, on how developing economies can unlock the trillions of dollars in private sector financing available for clean energy transition to fund “practical, tangible projects.”
Dominguez later pointed out that both sides — the governments represented by the ministers sitting as governors in multilateral banks, and the borrowers — trust these multilateral institutions.
“Why don’t we use them (multilateral banks) as catalysts and they can act as a seal of good housekeeping so that they set the standard for transparency,” he said. – Angela Celis
