The OPEC Fund Private Sector, punching above its weight

By Malcolm Bricknell, Loughborough University

Congratulations to The OPEC Fund for International Development on achieving the 25^th Anniversary of its pioneering and highly successful Private Sector Window.

The OPEC Fund has been one of the leading Development Finance Institutions in promoting the transition to Clean Cooking both through its regular operations and through its dedicated Trust Fund activities.

The involvement of leading Multilateral Development Finance Institutions like The OPEC Fund is crucial for providing urgently needed capital to scale the transition to clean cooking. The involvement of their private sector windows adds a very important additional dimension to the contributions that these institutions can make through their public sector operations. The private sector windows are able to provide direct finance to companies involved in cooking products and are also able to channel funding via local financial institutions to consumers to enable them to acquire modern energy cooking products.

The ways in which The OPEC Fund has been able to support private sector operations and the rationale behind this has also been outlined in its latest Quarterly report.

I was very happy to contribute to a related publication and wish The OPEC Fund every success in its endeavours going forward. Establishing a new Financing window is a major operation, especially when it involves a radical departure from the instruments and financing entities previously being handled by The OPEC Fund.

Large multilateral financing organisation like The OPEC Fund have a crucial role to play in the roll out of Modern Energy Cooking and the MECS Programme is very pleased to be able to cooperate with The OPEC Fund in the mutual objective of accelerating this transition.

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Featured Image: Copyright of The OPEC Fund, 2024.