At the G20 Finance Ministerial in India on July 17th, World Bank President Ajay Banga announced a new portfolio guarantee program with impressive leverage—$5 billion of donor guarantees that could generate $30 billion in lending over 10 years. This announcement was part of a package of new financial...

IF-CAP is a donor-backed guarantee facility, where public, private, and philanthropic financing partners take risk off the ADB’s balance sheet by guaranteeing to backstop repayments for ADB mitigation and adaptation climate projects. By guaranteeing repayments on specific climate investments, IF-CA...

More than ever, low and lower middle-income countries (LICs and LMICs) are in a race against time. Their ambition to deliver prosperous economies for their citizens appears continuously thwarted by different shocks. There is a growing sense of urgency among these economies as it becomes clear that t...

Debt suspension clauses (DSCs) are having their moment in the international policy arena spotlight. Also known as “pause clauses” or climate-resilient debt clauses, DSCs are mechanisms that allow a country to temporarily suspend debt repayments for a pre-agreed period (generally 1-2 years) if a nat...

Debt and climate change are defining challenges for many countries in Africa. Governments across the continent are seeing their debt burdens mount—some to unsustainable levels—as they race to mobilize resources to adapt and respond to the increasingly severe climate crisis.

World Bank loan terms are becoming increasingly attractive as global interest rates soar. This is not because the Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) loans have gotten cheaper, but because the average emerging market’s (EM) borrowing costs have risen so much more dram...

Not every country at risk of debt distress is at risk of a famine, and vice-versa. But for the handful of countries that are vulnerable to both, the interplay between the two crises could exact a devastating human toll.