World Bank plans securitisation, debt swaps to boost development

"We can't do project by project," Banga said of the securitisation plans. "We don't have 100 years."

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By Antony Sguazzin

 

The World Bank is considering securitising some of the projects it’s backing to attract more private funding as it prepares to roll out a series of debt-for-development swaps, President Ajay Banga said. 

It’s designed the initiative to help accelerate the pace of development in some of the world’s poorest nations and create some of the jobs that hundreds of millions of young people will need in the next decade, he said in an interview in Mozambique. 

 

“We can’t do project by project,” he said of the securitisation plans. “We don’t have 100 years.”

 

Banga, who took charge of the world’s biggest multilateral development bank two years ago, said he’s trying to change the way the lender works to speed up projects. The securitisation plan envisages private institutions like large pension funds taking loans off the World Bank’s balance sheet, allowing the lender to invest more. The swaps would enable countries to spend the interest savings on development. 

 

Under the securitisation plan, the bank is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on a pilot project to combine some of the projects backed by its International Finance Corp. unit into a package to offer to the market in the next four to five months, he said. 

 

“It’s the first time the World Bank has done this,” he said, adding that the idea would be to get the packages credit ratings. “Banks do it all the time.”

 

Goldman Sachs declined to comment. 

 

The debt-for-development swaps will be modeled on an arrangement the bank concluded with Ivory Coast in December. Under that plan, the West African nation will buy back about €400 million ($462 million) of its most expensive debt that matures over the next five years.

 

By using a partial World Bank guarantee, it will take out a commercial loan with a longer maturity, lower interest rate and grace period to free up €330 million over the period and save €60 million — on condition the savings are spent on education. 

 

“I’ve got nine more in the pipeline like that,” Banga said, declining to identify the countries. “They are all across Africa and parts of Asia.”