Commentary

The Case for Local-Currency Infrastructure Debt

Foreign-currency debt keeps exporting the very volatility development finance is meant to absorb. Deepening local-currency markets is the durable fix.

The Case for Local-Currency Infrastructure Debt
Commentary · UEDF Insights

Every infrastructure project financed in hard currency quietly transfers exchange-rate risk onto a balance sheet least able to bear it. When the currency moves, the project’s economics move with it — and the shock lands on the public purse.

Deepening local-currency bond markets is slower and less glamorous than a signing ceremony, but it is the difference between infrastructure that survives a cycle and infrastructure that becomes a contingent liability.

The coalition’s treasury work — local-currency solutions, guarantee facilities, anchor mandates for domestic institutional buyers — is aimed squarely at this: keeping FX risk off the member’s books while the market matures.

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