Publish What You Fund, a UK-based NGO aimed at increasing the transparency of international development efforts, recently launched its DFI Transparency Tool. The tool is meant to provide development finance institutions (DFIs) with guidance on disclosure practices and to allow for the monitoring of DFIs’ transparency on an ongoing basis.
In creating the DFI Transparency Tool, Publish What You Fund researched multilateral and bilateral DFIs and found the following areas to be key for disclosure: project costs; funding sources; impact management; and environmental, social and governance issues, including accountability to target communities. The tool divides each of these components into organisation-wide and project-specific subcomponents, as project-specific data are generally much more lacking than organization-wide data. Each of these subcomponents includes a set of survey questions and supporting guidance.
According to Robert Mosbacher, a former CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (now the US International Development Finance Corporation), “If we want to increase development impact, build new markets, improve accountability, and increase the ability to measure the value of DFI investments, we need systematic, project level disclosure that is timely and comparable.”
The goal of Publish What You Fund, which was founded in 2008, is to improve development outcomes by increasing the availability of data on international development – including by reducing the gap between perceived and actual risk to encourage more investment in emerging markets. The NGO received EUR 928,000 (USD 1.05 million) in donations during the year 2020.
By Zachary DeLuca, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources
DFI Transparency Tool description
https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/projects/dfi-transparency-tool/
DFI Transparency Tool (pdf)
https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2021/10/DFI-Transparency-Tool.pdf
Publish What You Fund homepage
https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/
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