Fast Growing International Finance And Banking Institute

The most famous and well known international bank and finance institute around the world today is the International Finance Corporation or IFC. This is a sector of the World Bank Group and provides financial services to those businesses who are wishing to invest in developing countries around the world.

This particular sector of the World Bank Group was established in 1956 in order to help support the growth that was occurring in the private sector in the developing countries around the globe. The main mission of this institute is to promote a sustainable investment for the private sector in developing countries while also helping to reduce the amount of poverty in these countries and so improve the lives of the people living there.

Whereas the World Bank through IBRD and IDA provide the governments of these developing countries with credit as well as non lending assistance, the IFC provides the following facilities instead to the private sector in them.

1. Loans 2. Equity Financing 3. Advice 4. Technical Services

It is the IFC which plays a role by being able to provide them with additional capital through loan syndication and also helps to reduce the political risk that would be investors would be facing and so allow them to participate in any given project in a developing country. Since its establishment the IFC has now helped more than 3,319 companies in over 140 countries to help them build a business that will provide a better future for them and those that they employ.

As an international finance and banking institute the IFC is one of the fastest growing of all of the institutes in the World Bank Group and in 2005 it has provided $5.3 billion worth of loan syndications to developing countries. But it also has its own portfolio of over $19.3. However there are still concerns relating to its disclosure of information and the processes it has in place with regard to public consultations and it is felt that these areas of the IFC still need more improvements to be made to them. Certainly there seems a requirement that more independent as well as systematic reviews of all projects that the IFC are involved in need to be carried out. But at the end of the day it is their job to help promote economic development in these developing countries.