Over the past decade, donors and international bodies have increasingly looked to inject private-sector resources and expertise into development by using official development assistance (ODA)—public finance—to ‘leverage’ private finance through ‘blending’ the two together. Donors claim that using ODA to subsidize and leverage private finance will bring in new investments to fill the $2.5 trillion annual funding gap required to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Donors also see blending as a way to support large-scale infrastructure projects in middle-income countries. Blended development finance is also a response to growing pressure among donors to link their own commercial interests with development policy.
This briefing has been prepared by Eurodad to inform Oxfam’s work on the blending of ODA with private finance (PF). It summarizes the findings of an in-depth research paper.
