MCDF Coordination Committee Discusses National Development Banks’ Connectivity Investment Role in Latin America and Caribbean

National development banks’ roles and activities in cross-border connectivity infrastructure development in Latin America and the Caribbean were the focus of a roundtable discussion during the first MCDF Coordination Committee (CC) meeting in 2025. The hybrid meeting was hosted by this year’s CC Chair, the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), from Lima, Peru on 20 March.

Setting the stage for the roundtable, CAF Executive Vice President, Mr. Gianpiero Leoncini, noted in his welcome remarks the importance of further deepening information sharing and collaboration among CC members and other partners to promote high-quality connectivity infrastructure investments. MCDF CEO Zhongjing Wang and staff also provided updates on MCDF work in these areas.

The roundtable was moderated by Mr. Edgardo Alvarez, Secretary General of the Latin American Association of Development Financing Institutions (ALIDE), and featured insights from Mr. Jorge Velarde, Board Chair of the Development Bank of Peru (COFIDE) and Mr. Francisco Lozano, President of the National Development Finance Corporation of Columbia (FDN).

The two panelists introduced their institutions and described connectivity infrastructure development trends, challenges, and innovations among national development banks in Latin America and the Caribbean. They also discussed how to increase these financial institutions’ collaboration with multilateral development banks (MDBs).

Mr. Velarde highlighted the increasingly key role that COFIDE and other national development banks in the region play in assessing project bankability, mobilizing project funding, and ensuring environmental and social standards in investments. Capacity building support in these areas from MCDF and MDBs such as CAF is crucial, he continued.

Mr. Lozano described the growing number of infrastructure public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the region and the project lending and structuring services that FDN and other national development banks provide to them.

Mr. Lozano said that one of FDN’s main strengths is its knowledge of what private investors want and stressed the need for timely support to government agencies to develop PPPs as bankable projects. Building a pipeline of such projects is a bigger hurdle than sourcing the financing, he added.

Roundtable participants noted the value of MCDF as a mechanism for providing project preparation grants to ease this bottleneck. These grants are provided through CAF and other accredited Implementing Partners to support high-quality connectivity infrastructure investment in the region and beyond.

The roundtable participants also underscored the large space for cooperation among MCDF, national development banks, and MDBs on infrastructure PPPs. The 2025 Workshop Series on Public-Private Partnerships Hot Topics cohosted by MCDF and partner International Financial Institutions was mentioned as an entry point for greater information sharing and collaboration in this space.