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I enjoy quite a lot every year reading ideas action proposals many of them are some
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things that even we in the World Bank Group have not thought about but ultimately I think about the ideas for
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action is something that we can actually put into action and and implement and finance and when you think of some
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challenging challenging countries we call them fragile and conflict affected countries or challenging sectors for
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example where where you don't have a private participation in health or education or even energy generation I
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don't think that if we focus only on financing through public sources or only
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our wait for the conditions where we can use commercial financing I don't think
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that we have time to do that and hence I do look at blended finance which is somewhere in between as a very practical
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way of financing some of the innovative pioneering projects through private sector but helping improve the returns
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for the private sector and manage the financial risk of those transactions so I'm all for for using blended finance in
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those special circumstances and we have a number of examples where actually this
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has worked very well where we were open to create a demonstration effect to bring the first solar private operator
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in a country like Zambia to show that this can be done through private means we use the 15 million on blended finance
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15 million o5c commercial financing and 15 million of OPIC financing to structure this deal but now we know that
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for the second solar project in Zambia we will not need to blend that much and and and eventually it will all be
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commercially financed I mean talking about blended fairness I want just to step back for a moment when issues of
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course when these young innovators and entrepreneurs think about their project sometimes they are not well in for
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available financial resources so and that's why idea for action is really not
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primarily about competition of ideas is social capacity development so the more young people are informed about this new
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of a financing mechanism more freedom they will have in thinking about their projects because now they know their new
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mechanisms for supporting and implementing this project but even step further because the more and more what
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we are seeing in the last few years is that even bigger companies are not necessarily well equipped to develop
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projects which will meet the requirement of blended finest you have to have quite
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of expertise inside the companies to address this broader economic and social issues which are related to this project
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and I think the role of young professionals working for these companies is critical so the more young
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professional we have inside the companies to innovate but also kind of push from the bottom up the
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opportunities which are offered by these new sources of finance we make it easier
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for these companies to partner with IFC and other financial institutions to fully utilize the potential of blended
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finance you