It should also be noted that the research initiated a review into three additional cases, but which were left out of the review for different reasons: -
Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, there is one PDB (Banco Nacional de Costa Rica – BNCR), and two other financial institutions, called Banco Popular y Desarrollo Communal (BPDC) and Instituto Nacional de Fomento Cooperativo (INFOCOOP), which not fully comply the definitions of PDB. BPDC and INFOCOOP do provide some finance and technical support to water association and cooperatives, but it is very limited. BNCR was confirmed not be active in water-related. Given that they are not full PDBs and have limited involvement, it was decided not to include Costa Rica in the full analysis.
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Bolivia. In Bolivia, there is no PDB active in water-related investments, but there are two Funds, which fulfil a similar role of providing repayable finance to local governments, without having a banking status. Though potentially interesting, it was not possible to interview the Fondo Nacional De Desarrollo Regional, the main such Fund.
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Both the national PDBs from the Caribbean and the IFI from that sub-region (Caribank) were also excluded from the research, given that it is a lesser priority region for AFD.
Taken together, we consider that these cases provide the insights from PDBs that for a longer time have been active in financing investments in the water sector. However, the caveat needs to be made that the cases of the national PDBs are all from upper middle income countries, with relatively mature water and financial sectors. These are complemented by the experience of El Salvador, but also of the BCIE in Central America, which operate in the lower middle income countries, and those also being countries with less mature water sectors.
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