悉尼：过去一个月中，布伦特原油价格大部分时间都在每桶100美元以上，而柴油价格则超过两倍，人们可能会想象，世界上最贫困的化石燃料进口国如今正面临危机状况。
SYDNEY: With Brent crude above US$100 a barrel for most of the past month and diesel prices more than twice as high, you might imagine that the world’s poorest fossil fuel importers would be hitting crisis conditions right now.
他们尚未陷入危机，这得益于发展金融领域增长最快的趋势之一——帮助石油和天然气用户支付他们负担不起的燃油费用。
That they’re not quite there is down to one of the fastest-growing trends in development finance - helping oil and gas users pay for fuel they can’t afford.
以孟加拉国政府上周达成的33亿美元紧急能源方案为例。亚洲开发银行将提供2亿美元，用于为期五年的项目，修复首都达卡快速城市化郊区破败的电网。该地区停电时间常达12小时或更长，引发了抗议和路障。然而，这笔资金的大部分——约31亿美元——将用于支付当前财政年度的石油和天然气进口。
Take the US$3.3 billion emergency energy package agreed by Bangladesh’s government last week. Some US$200 million from the Asian Development Bank will go toward a five-year programme repairing the crumbling electricity grid on the fast-urbanising fringes of the capital Dhaka, where power cuts lasting 12 hours or more have provoked protests and blockades. The lion’s share of the money, though - some US$3.1 billion - will pay for oil and gas imports in just the current fiscal year.
而这笔资金，反过来又高度依赖于世界上增长最快的多边银行之一——伊斯兰贸易金融公司（ITFC）的资金和专业能力。
That money, in turn, depends heavily on the cash and expertise of one of the world’s fastest-growing multilateral banks, the International Islamic Trade Finance Corp, or ITFC.
主要多边贷款机构：与世界银行和亚洲开发银行等传统多边机构不同，ITFC并非主要从事提供低成本融资以支持基础设施建设和经济发展的业务。
MAJOR MULTILATERAL LENDER Unlike conventional multilaterals such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the ITFC isn’t primarily in the business of providing cheap financing for infrastructure to aid economic development.
相反，自2008年成立以来，ITFC已累计发放780亿美元的资金，其中大部分用于类似孟加拉国贷款的交易：即半商业性贷款，帮助资金紧张的国家支付石油进口费用。这对OPEC成员国来说是一大利好，因为它们是ITFC的主要股东。
Instead, most of the US$78 billion it has disbursed since it was founded in 2008 has gone to transactions similar to the Bangladeshi loan: Semi-commercial lending to help cash-strapped countries pay for their imports of petroleum. That’s a win for the OPEC members who are the ITFC’s main shareholders.
这种需求的旺盛程度足以让伊斯兰贸易融资公司在近年来成为世界上主要的多边贷款机构之一。2020年至2024年，其总放款额达到290亿美元，使其与非洲开发银行和欧洲复兴开发银行等传统机构处于同一水平。仅今年，它就为马尔代夫和埃及各签署了价值15亿美元的框架协议，为布基纳法索、科特迪瓦和吉布提签署了价值29亿美元的协议，为毛里塔尼亚签署了10亿美元的协议，为塞内加尔签署了7.06亿美元的协议。
The hunger for such finance has been enough to turn the ITFC into one of the world’s major multilateral lenders in recent years. Between 2020 and 2024, total disbursements came to US$29 billion, putting it in the same league as conventional institutions such as the African Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This year alone, it has signed framework agreements worth US$1.5 billion apiece for the Maldives and Egypt, plus US$2.9 billion for Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire and Djibouti, US$1 billion for Mauritania and US$706 million for Senegal.
这并没有什么阴谋。正如哈瓦那、卡拉奇或马尼拉的人如今所能体会的那样，燃料进口短缺可能和货币危机一样具有毁灭性。通过在这些紧急情况下支持受援国，伊斯兰贸易融资公司正在满足困境中人们的迫切需求，就像国际货币基金组织在外汇储备耗尽时所做的那样。
There’s nothing nefarious about this. As anyone in Havana, Karachi or Manila these days would appreciate, being starved of fuel imports can be as devastating as going through a currency crisis. By supporting recipients through such emergencies, the ITFC is meeting the immediate needs of desperate people, as the International Monetary Fund does when foreign exchange reserves dry up.
其部分贷款也用于非石油需求：截至2024年的累计放款中，约有16%用于粮食和农业，而有67%直接用于非可再生能源。一笔不好的交易？
A slice of its lending goes to non-petroleum needs, too: About 16 per cent of cumulative disbursements through 2024 went to food and agriculture, compared with 67 per cent going direct to non-renewable energy.
这对受援国来说仍然看起来像是一笔不好的交易。世界上最贫穷的国家——包括伊斯兰合作组织许多成员国，而伊斯兰贸易融资公司正是为了服务这些国家而成立的——由于资本短缺而难以实现增长。反复借款来融资燃料进口并不能解决这一根本问题——它只是把问题推迟到以后，届时外汇储备耗尽和政府债务高企的问题可能会再次出现。
A BAD DEAL? It still looks like a bad deal for recipients. The world’s poorest nations, including many members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that the ITFC was set up to serve, struggle to grow because they’re short of capital. Repeatedly borrowing money to finance fuel imports doesn’t solve that underlying problem - it merely defers it to a later date, when the same issues of depleted foreign-exchange reserves and government debt may well recur.
更糟的是，这鼓励受援国向富裕国家支付费用以购买燃料，而这些燃料将在几个月内被完全消耗掉，而它们的根本问题在于缺乏能够支撑数十年增长的资产。
Worse, it encourages recipients to pay richer countries for fuel that will all be burned in a matter of months, when their fundamental problem is a shortage of assets that could support decades of growth.
十亿美元的太阳能农场在其整个生命周期内所产生的电力大约是同样金额用于液化天然气所能产生的电力的10倍。然而，后者的廉价融资很容易获得，而前者则必须在主要开发银行冗长的审批过程中艰难前行。
A billion dollars’ worth of solar farms will provide roughly 10 times as much electricity over their lifetimes as the same amount of money spent on liquefied natural gas. Cheap financing for the latter, however, is readily available, whereas the former must struggle through the interminable approval processes at major development banks.
这一切的结果是，尽管更好的替代方案已经存在，发展中国家仍然依赖化石燃料。孟加拉国凸显了这种荒谬性：作为气候变化加剧时最易受洪水、热浪和气旋威胁的国家之一，孟加拉国正从石油出口国借钱来购买石油。而这种燃料对本国公民来说太昂贵，若没有进一步的政府补贴，他们根本买不起。与此同时，同一政府却制定了一套繁杂的规定，以阻碍更便宜的清洁能源的发展。
The outcome of all this is to keep developing countries hooked on fossil fuels when better alternatives are already available. Bangladesh’s underscores this absurdity: One of the countries most at risk of flooding, heatwaves and cyclones as climate change intensifies is borrowing money from oil exporters to buy petroleum. That fuel, in turn, is too expensive for its own citizens to buy without further government subsidies. Meanwhile, the same government cultivates a thicket of regulations to choke the growth of cheaper clean energy.
解决这一问题的办法不是生气，而是以牙还牙。传统开发银行在以所需规模融资清洁能源方面进展太慢、太笨拙。如果能源转型要避免在支出上被化石燃料经济甩在后面，其贷款方就必须提升自身水平。
The answer to this isn’t to get mad, but to get even. Conventional development banks have been too slow and cumbersome in financing clean power on the scale required. If the energy transition is to avoid being outspent by the fossil fuel economy, its lenders will have to step up their game.