Developing economies drew more than $200 billion in combined World Bank Group financing and mobilized private investment in fiscal year 2026, the institution announced on Thursday, as it posted its largest-ever haul of private capital and guarantee issuance in a single year.
The centerpiece of the results: private capital mobilization (PCM) reached $112 billion in FY26, up from just $35 billion in FY22, a more than threefold increase in four years. Added to the Group’s own lending and investment, total financing and mobilization for the year topped $200 billion.
The gains were spread across income levels and regions. Lower-middle-income countries saw PCM climb from $14 billion to $37 billion over the period, while upper-middle-income countries saw more than a fourfold jump, from $12 billion to $50 billion.
Even in low-income countries, historically the hardest environments in which to attract private investment, mobilization held steady at roughly $3 billion. Africa saw PCM rise from about $9 billion to $22 billion, an increase of close to 150 percent.
Guarantees were a major driver of the growth. The Group issued more than $25 billion in guarantees during the year, blowing past its own target of $20 billion in annual guaranteed issuance by 2030, a goal it now says it hit four years early.
Much of that increase came through the World Bank Group Guarantee Platform, launched in 2024 to give investors and borrowing governments a single-entry point into the institution’s guarantee products.
Bank officials attributed the turnaround to a three-year effort to restructure how the institution works with private investors: merging public- and private-sector teams under single country-level points of contact, building integrated country strategies, and widening the menu of financial tools on offer, from local-currency financing to new equity instruments and mechanisms to manage foreign-exchange risk.
A dedicated Private Sector Investment Lab was tasked with identifying the specific obstacles blocking investment and building a plan to clear them.
World Bank Group President Ajay Banga framed the results as a down payment on a larger jobs mandate. The institution estimates that 1.2 billion young people in developing economies will reach working age over the next decade to 15 years, while current trends point to only about 420 million new jobs being created in that span, a gap the Bank says must be closed primarily by the private sector, which already generates nine of every ten jobs in these economies.
To that end, 55 percent of the Group’s FY26 financing and mobilization was directed toward five sectors it has identified as especially job-rich: infrastructure and energy, agribusiness, healthcare, tourism, and value-added manufacturing.
Officials also pointed to evidence that capital is beginning to reach beyond the largest, most liquid markets, with local and regional investors increasingly co-financing deals in lower-income economies alongside global capital.
Looking ahead, the Bank said it is building out an “originate-to-distribute” model designed to package developing-market investments in forms that institutional investors, pension funds, insurers, and other holders of long-term capital can more easily buy into at scale, with the aim of pulling a broader pool of global capital into the market.
