The following joint statement was adopted by Multilateral Development Banks including the EIB Group at the World Bank Group/International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings on 17 April 2026.
We, the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), recognise the importance of working together to help build diversified, resilient, and responsible critical minerals to manufacturing value chains, in order to scale up support for clean, affordable, and reliable energy access, as well as the digital and economic transformation of our client countries. We will work with governments, the private sector, workers, and communities to foster transparent, standards-based markets, to add value beyond extraction, and to mobilise capital at scale for projects that meet our respective development goals and environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards. Each party plays distinct roles: client countries provide mineral scale and value-add ambition; global partners bring demand, technology, and capital; and MDBs bridge the two through policy and regulatory support, catalysing private investment, promotion of regional cooperation and infrastructure financing.
We will further strengthen our cooperation through a Joint Collaboration Framework that leverages each institution’s comparative advantages to deliver more coordinated, timely, scalable, and impactful support to resilient critical minerals to manufacturing value chains across developing countries, while acknowledging our respective institutional mandates, and critical minerals strategies and frameworks. In this context, we will seek to identify opportunities for joint operations—including through co-financing and shared diagnostics, where relevant—and we will report on progress achieved.
Strengthened and more coordinated support to our client countries will be pursued in the following areas:
1. Policy and governance strengthening
- Policy, legal, fiscal, trade, and permitting frameworks, with a view to enabling responsible investment and improving predictability for investors.
- International best environmental and social standards, as well as international best practices in governance, transparency and accountability.
2. Integrated infrastructure, corridor-based approaches, and value chain expansion
- Quality enabling infrastructure—including power, transport, logistics, digital connectivity and water—that supports critical minerals value chains, fosters innovation and enables circular economy solutions.
- Projects that maximise local economic benefits, including skilled jobs, SME participation, inclusion of women and vulnerable groups and community engagement.
- Corridors that link mining activities with processing hubs, create market access for other economic sectors such as agriculture, strengthen regional trade, attract private investment, and promote regional integration—contributing to broader economic transformation in client countries.
- Value chain expansion and diversification by moving beyond extraction and into processing, manufacturing, and circular value chains in order to drive economic transformations that deepen domestic value addition.
3. Capital mobilisation, private sector investment, and market development
- Capital mobilisation at scale and acceleration of private sector investments by strengthening project preparation, structuring, and derisking, and by coordinating public and private finance to close viability gaps and deliver bankable, high- standard- investments.
- Market development by helping our clients enhance market transparency, efficiency, and resilience, including through improved data availability and management.
Our call to action
We are committed to urgent and results-focused engagement with client countries and global partners to rapidly scale diversified, resilient, and responsible critical minerals to manufacturing value chains. These would be aligned with clients’ national priorities, delivering tangible outcomes, including job creation and inclusive economic development that positively impact people for generations to come. We invite all stakeholders to partner with us.