Infrastructure Forum

This session will discuss how both developed and emerging countries are approaching financing and governance of resilient infrastructure in an evolving international context, and how public investment management and private capital mobilisation can be essential to achieving this policy objective.

For countries that face political risk, whether perceived or real, the use of derisking instruments such as political risk insurance and/or war risk insurance can be catalytic in unlocking necessary financing for infrastructure projects. This session discusses its functioning and challenges holding back its use to support financing towards infrastructure.

Public investment management (PIM) is a key mechanism to ensure that governments can deliver the resilient infrastructure that they need. This session discusses the performance of recent PIM reforms and draws out lessons from various country experiences.

Subnational governments are responsible for a majority of public investment, including to build and maintain public infrastructure. Yet, issues such as lower tax autonomy and more constrained access to borrowing makes their capacity to undertake these investments more vulnerable to fiscal consolidation and economic shocks. This session will discuss how subnational governments can build a more resilient public investment framework to be able to deliver on their infrastructure needs.

Digital infrastructure is the foundation for all transformative digital technologies, underpinning productivity growth, innovation and business competitiveness, and, critically, artificial intelligence. This session will explore the critical role of resilient communication networks in a world increasingly dependent on connectivity, and the challenges policymakers face in protecting networks from system failures, malicious actions, and natural disasters. It will also raise issues related to bottlenecks to the investments needed to ensure resilient communication networks of the future.

Infrastructure that enables economic corridors provides important economic and trade networks that can support greater cooperation across regions. This session will discuss connectivity along regional corridors, and how infrastructure connectivity can improve resilience and growth, with a focus on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).

At a time when many countries are increasing expenditure on national defense, investments in resilience of critical infrastructure can produce strategic synergies between the civil and defense sectors. This session will discuss dual benefits of increasing critical infrastructure resilience in terms of business continuity and national preparedness. Speakers will highlight the success factors in achieving such synergies, including effective coordination between line ministries, regulators and infrastructure operators, as well as cooperation in managing hazards and threats that could produce cascading effects across different infrastructure systems.

The OECD's Sustainable Infrastructure Programme in Asia (SIPA) worked with six countries across Central and Southeast Asia to align infrastructure with low-emission, climate-resilient development pathways and the SDGs. This session will draw on the lessons from SIPA in how governments strengthened planning and project evaluation across the investment cycle.

The Blue Dot Network certification provides a framework for embedding resilience at every stage of the infrastructure life cycle. The session will consider a variety of complementary tools, methodologies and frameworks that can inform more systematic and verifiable approaches.

The OECD Prevent-React-Rebuild (PRR) Framework for infrastructure resilience highlights that rebuilding of infrastructure should be viewed as an opportunity to address structural weaknesses, reduce future risks and accelerate long-term development. Building on the OECD’s PRR and other international frameworks, this session will present the findings of the OECD-World Bank Compendium of Good Practices on Quality Infrastructure 2026: Rebuilding for the Future, which explores global experiences and identifies practical lessons to transform post-disaster reconstruction into an investment in resilience.