March 5, 2024 (WASHINGTON) – As activity gets underway on Capitol Hill and in the Administration to reauthorize the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (BUILD) Act of 2018, which created the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) today released a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for strengthening the work of the DFC.
MFAN’s key recommendations for enhancing the BUILD Act include: modifying the scoring of its equity authority to more accurately account for future returns on investments; reinforcing the agency’s development mandate and its focus on low- and lower-middle-income countries, while also improving the process for considering projects in upper-middle-income countries; increasing the agency’s risk appetite; strengthening transparency; and optimizing the role of the agency’s Chief Development Officer and the Office of Accountability. These policy recommendations are the product of MFAN members' expertise in development finance and their work with the DFC since its establishment in 2019. Read MFAN’s full set of recommendations for reauthorization of the BUILD Act here.
“It’s very encouraging to see the bipartisan interest in both the House and Senate to reauthorize the DFC this year and equip it with the tools it needs to maximize its impact,” said Tod Preston, MFAN’s Executive Director. “MFAN was an early leader in calling for the creation of the DFC, and since it opened its doors we’ve been working to ensure it can fully live up to the promise of the BUILD Act: to be the U.S. government’s premier international development finance agency and an integral part of our nation’s foreign policy toolkit. We believe these updates to the BUILD Act would go a long way in enhancing the agency’s critical work in driving more private investment in the developing world, which is vital for so many development needs and foreign policy priorities.”
MFAN is a bipartisan reform coalition composed of international development and foreign policy practitioners, policy advocates, and experts from the U.S. and Global South. We promote more effective and accountable U.S. foreign assistance that advances American interests, delivering greater results for people in need and U.S. taxpayers.
