Panelist at AIX: Power and Renewables
Pankaj Gupta is the Practice Manager of the Financial Solutions unit at the World Bank.  In this capacity he leads the project finance and guarantees business for the World Bank.
World Bank (IBRD and IDA) Loans & Guarantees are used to help member countries mobilize private financing for development purposes. They are distinct from and complementary to the Bank’s other development finance instruments.  For the World Bank, Guarantees operations are a small share of the Bank’s portfolio, but they have been seen as highly effective in leveraging limited ODA resources to mobilize greater private financing for critical projects and programs.
The Project Finance and Guarantees program of the Bank is a now a growing portfolio of over 50 projects, with about US$4 Billion of exposure that has leveraged over US$13 Billion of private capital, and over 30 billion in project financing.  Under Pankaj’s leadership, the World Bank has embarked on modernizing its operational policy on Guarantees to ensure continued availability of risk mitigation instruments to meet changing market needs.
Pankaj specializes in project finance and use of risk mitigation instruments to support transformational public and private infrastructure projects. He has demonstrated leadership across the World Bank Groups by pulling together IFC, MIGA, and the Bank (IBRD and IDA) joint participation in a number of challenging high-risk high-reward projects such as Nam Theun II Hydro Power Project (Laos), the West African Gas Pipeline, the Chad Cameroon Oil Pipeline, the Dasu Hydropower Project (Pakistan), Eskom Investment Support Project (South Africa) and most recently the Ghana OCTP “Sankofa” Oil and Gas Project (Ghana).  Pankaj also led the most recent World Bank guaranteed sovereign bond issuance by Ghana in October 2015.  Since joining the World Bank in 1996, Pankaj has also worked on many key capital market guarantee transactions notably in Thailand, Colombia and Argentina.  Many of the projects that he has led for the Bank have won awards from various industry publications.
Pankaj holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi University and an MBA from Georgetown University, Washington D.C.