NEW DELHI — The World Bank is seeking to develop more investment-ready projects in emerging markets to attract private capital for development, saying a shortage of viable projects remains a major barrier to financing sectors such as agriculture, health, and water.
Emerging economies have significant potential to attract commercial funding, but projects must be properly structured, financially viable, and attractive to investors, World Bank Group strategy director Arturo Franco said in a panel discussion at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) Global Conference 2026 in this capital city of India on Tuesday.
“There is no standardization of emerging markets or developing economy projects” in investable sectors such as agriculture, health, and water, Franco pointed out, noting that multilateral institutions are working to develop projects that can be offered to private investors.
The effort comes as development needs continue to exceed resources available from governments, philanthropies, and multilateral institutions, increasing the need to mobilize private capital.
Franco said the World Bank’s Private Sector Investment Lab has identified five major barriers to greater private investment in emerging markets.
Launched in 2023, its recommendations include providing greater regulatory certainty, expanding and improving World Bank Group guarantees, mitigating foreign exchange risks, developing emerging markets and economies asset class, and deploying more junior equity capital.
Franco, however, said private investment cannot finance every development need, particularly projects without a commercial component.
Still, he said more development projects could attract commercial financing if they were better prepared.
For private investors, development objectives must be turned into projects with clear structures, manageable risks, and viable financial models, he said.
Governments play a key role in creating the conditions for investment, while philanthropy can help strengthen institutional capacity and the World Bank can support policy reforms, Franco noted.
He said blended finance, which combines concessional and commercial funding, can also make difficult projects more attractive to private investors, but should not be treated as the sole solution to development financing.
He added that concessional private equity, particularly junior capital in blended-finance structures, remains scarce.
But the World Bank has been working to increase the availability of such financing. The International Finance Corp. (IFC), the World Bank Group’s private-sector arm, has invested $100 million of retained earnings in a new Frontier Opportunities Fund, which has an initial target size of $500 million.
The broader goal is to use limited public and concessional resources to mobilize substantially larger amounts of private investment.
In fiscal year 2025, the IFC released more than $1 billion in partner funding for blended finance, upstream work, and advisory activities.
