Ukraine’s private sector plays a significant role in maintaining the country’s economic activity despite Russia's invasion, but it needs support. As a member of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation is using its resources and influence to address private sector financing needs now while preparing the ground for future reconstruction. Despite a large state presence, the country’s private sector represents a sizeable proportion of Ukraine’s economy, pr

In 2020, the Sri Lanka lost access to the international financial markets following credit rating downgrades. Official reserves had depleted to a critically low level of US$2.8bn by the end of July that year. The country announced an external debt service suspension in April 2022 and in May the same year it defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history. The country – which has a population of 22.6 million people – had been due to pay US$7bn in debt service in 2022. Experts

3When Facebook announced its Libra digital currency project in 2019, central banks around the world looked on with unease. If a private entity with a user base the size of Facebook’s could launch a currency and attract significant uptake, it could severely hinder central banks’ ability to control monetary policy, raising potential financial stability concerns. “That really jolted central banks into action because they didn’t want a big private institution to start playing

It is not just the Paris climate goals that exercise the minds of the 196 countries – most UN members minus the presence of major carbon emitter Iran – which signed up to the agreement in 2015 covering climate change mitigation, adaptation and green finance but also the UN's Sustainable Development Goals which most (191) of the Paris signatories also inked that year, the central mission of which is to eradicate poverty, provide sustainable energy and water resources and decent health

For Triple A rated supranationals, the upward progression of interest rates over the past 18 months has presented an unfamiliar problem. Long used to tapping the US dollar market at will, issuers such as the World Bank, International Finance Corporation and Inter-American Development Bank have been forced to adopt a more nimble approach to funding and seek fresh pockets of demand and liquidity in less familiar currencies and tenors. “In the past year, there have been fewer attractive issua

Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to decline to 3.6% this year from 3.9% in 2022, as a big funding squeeze has taken a grip on the region, according to the International Monetary Fund. The cost of international borrowing is prohibitively high for most countries in the region. All sub-Saharan African frontier markets have been cut off from market access since spring 2022, with no Eurobond issuance. Most countries have been able to borrow in local capital markets but at a higher co

When Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador swept to power in 2018 on a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, many international investors were concerned about the impact the left-wing populist would have on the country’s financial markets. Now, as AMLO enters the final stretch of his six-year tenure, Mexican assets are in better shape than many investors had initially feared. The cost of insuring Mexico’s debt against default is back down to roughly where it was before he cam