Public Sector Investment Facility – call for concept papers

The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland is looking for new ideas for Public Sector Investment Facility Projects on yearly rounds of concept paper appraisals. Please send your application by the end 5 March 2021 (Finnish time) to: [email protected].

The Public Sector Investment Facility (PIF) is a so-called mixed credit, which combines development cooperation funding and export credit.  Its objective is to support such public sector investments in developing countries that comply with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2030 Agenda) and build on Finnish expertise and technology.

At this stage, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA) is calling for proposals for concept papers, in which the project idea and basic information is presented to the MFA. The paper may come from either a Finnish company interested in implementing the project, a public sector party in the target country, a financial institution interested in funding the project, or a company based in a third-party country.

PIF allows funding for public sector projects in countries listed by Finnvera as eligible for export credit guarantees in the least developed country (LDC), low income country (LIC) and lower middle income country (LMIC) categories. On this round of concept papers the MFA is especially interested in projects that are linked to the Developing Markets Platform (DevPlat), a joint initiative of the MFA and Business Finland. More information on DevPlat can be found on the Business Finland homepage.

Support can be given for investments focusing on, for example, the social, water supply, energy, cleantech sectors or other sectors suitable for development cooperation. Projects must be compatible with Finland's development policies (incl. guidelines on human rights and the results-based approach).

The company implementing the project must be registered in Finland, and the Finnish project content must meet the level approved by Finnvera, a state-owned specialised financing company. The level is determined in Finnvera’s effective set of norms.
At present, it usually means that around one-third of the content must be of Finnish origin.

More information on PIF: https://um.fi/public-sector-investment-facility