London, 22 June — The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) has committed to partner with Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a part of BlackRock, to help mobilise approximately USD 750m private institutional investment into climate-resilient infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies.
Subject to regulatory and investor approvals, PIDG will support the GIP Infrastructure Resilience Development Fund (IRDF) through a USD 6.4 million first-loss catalytic capital investment. GuarantCo, PIDG’s guarantees solution, will provide certain IRDF investors with a USD 35 million partial second-loss guarantee at the end of the fund life.
The IRDF is a blended finance vehicle designed in partnership with the Insurance Development Forum to enhance natural catastrophe protection and build climate resilience in developing nations. The two PIDG instruments strengthen the fund’s risk profile for institutional investors and help create a structure that can mobilise capital at scale for sectors including clean energy, water and sanitation, transport, digital infrastructure and other climate-resilient assets.
Philippe Valahu, Chief Executive Officer, PIDG said, “This partnership with BlackRock will represent a paradigm shift in how we finance climate-resilient infrastructure in the markets that need it most. We are looking forward to the transformational milestone to prove private capital can flow at scale to build resilient economies across Africa and Asia, demonstrating the commercial viability of the emerging market infrastructure asset class.”
The fund’s innovative structure is intended to be replicable, establishing a model for future fund-level credit enhancement that can successfully channel vast pools of private institutional capital into emerging markets infrastructure.
The transaction, which is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 (climate action), reflects PIDG’s strategy to deploy a versatile range of products across the project lifecycle to mobilise private investment for sustainable infrastructure that can improve lives, strengthen resilience and support economic growth where it is most urgently needed.
About PIDG
The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) is an innovative infrastructure development and finance organisation that mobilises private investment to support sustainable and inclusive infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia. Since 2002, PIDG has supported 286 infrastructure projects, mobilising USD 32.7 billion in private-sector investment and attracting USD 51.4 billion in total project investment, helping improve access to infrastructure for approximately 240 million people.
About GuarantCo
GuarantCo mobilises private sector local currency investment for infrastructure projects and supports the development of financial markets in lower income countries across Africa and Asia. GuarantCo is part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) and is funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia and Sweden, through the PIDG Trust, the Netherlands, through FMO and the PIDG Trust, France through a stand-by facility and Global Affairs Canada through a repayable facility. GuarantCo is rated AA- by Fitch and A1 by Moody’s. Since 2005, GuarantCo has enabled USD 7.1 billion of total investment and USD 6.8 billion of private sector investment, giving 44.8 million people access to infrastructure and creating around 248,000 jobs.
Media contact:
PIDG – Richa Bhardwaj, Communications Lead
Richa.bhardwaj@pidg.org
# # #
In the image, from left to right: Cecilie Sørhus, PIDG; Dana Baldwin, BlackRock; Ekhosuehi Iyahen, Insurance Development Forum; Marco Serena, PIDG; Emilio Cattaneo, PIDG; Matt Kaczmarek, BlackRock; Louise Kooy-Henckel, BlackRock; Naresh Goyal, PIDG; Nishant Kumar, PIDG; Luke Foley, PIDG; Joanna Chin, PIDG; Jonathan Neo, PIDG; Dongyoung Kim, PIDG
