MANILA, Philippines (July 15, 2026) — Special Interest Groups (SIGs) of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) convened virtually today, July 15, 2026, to coordinate key progress reports and align deliverables ahead of the upcoming 49th ADFIAP Annual Meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, scheduled for September 23–25, 2026, with the General Assembly on September 24.
The meeting was facilitated by ADFIAP Secretary General Enrique Florencio, who highlighted the SIGs’ unified mission: diagnosing pain points of member Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), developing practical solutions, and strengthening overall institutional capacity.
Of the six thematic groups, five provided updates,
- SIG1 (Blended Finance – led by State Development Corporation VEB.RF): Reported on the successful blended finance seminar held in late May. The group has compiled a draft guidebook based on seminar presentations and Convergence statistics and is now focused on enriching it with case studies from Japan, Oman, and Iran.
- SIG2 (Sustainable Finance – led by ARDB Bank): Outlined a strategic roadmap focusing on green and climate finance in the Asia-Pacific region. The team is finalizing its research proposal and plans to host a roundtable with a presentation and panel sessions to gather best practices for an upcoming working paper.
- SIG3 (Sustainable Infrastructure – led by NABARD): Highlighted critical challenges in mobilizing climate finance, including high hedging costs, high cost of capital, and restrictive criteria from multilateral development banks (MDBs). They plan to document these pain points and validate their project assessment framework with MDBs such as ADB and IFC.
- SIG5 (Housing – led by FSM Development Bank): Emphasized a region-specific housing model tailored for Pacific Island countries, focusing on lending to individual landowners rather than developers. Enrique offered to coordinate a meeting with Pag-IBIG Fund, the Philippine government’s housing institution, to support their work.
- SIG6 (Agriculture and Food Security – led by ARDB Bank): Discussed plans to prepare a synthesis report on agri-food processing SMEs and to organize a roundtable discussion prior to the Colombo meeting.
The meeting concluded with specific assignments distributed among the team leaders to finalize deliverables ahead of the September meetings:
The ADFIAP Perspective: Collaborative Special Interest Groups as Engines of Change
As the global financial architecture faces tighter credit and heightened geopolitical reconfigurations, the active output of ADFIAP’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs) underscores a pivotal evolution within the association.
The progress across these thematic groups demonstrates a critical principle of modern development banking: meaningful impact is driven by specialized, localized, and actionable knowledge sharing. Rather than operating in silos, ADFIAP’s members are compiling guidebooks, outlining regional housing blueprints, and directly addressing the high capital costs of climate finance. This collaborative approach offers ADFIAP members an expert roadmap for turning regional vulnerabilities into highly structured, investable, and resilient socio-economic assets in time for the Colombo Assemblies.