Background

GENERAL BACKGROUND

The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) articulate the United Nations’ universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity The UN estimates that achieving the SDGs requires overcoming a critical financing gap of US$ 5-7 trillion per year. It recognizes that the private sector has a fundamental role to play if the world is to achieve the Goals and ensure economic growth and poverty reduction that does not come at the expense of environmental damage, climate change as well as social and income inequalities. Private sector participation will be required at a larger scale than presently deployed through the global impact investment community. The 2030 Agenda and SDGs need to become a global framework for private actors to capture the benefits and trade-offs of sustainable development. This means encouraging greater SDG- aligned investments from institutional investors and corporations, using the 2030 Agenda as a proactive roadmap for capital deployment, rather than exclusively as a framework for the retroactive and often public finance focused assessment of impact.

 To galvanise private sector investment and mobilise global private capital towards SDG aligned investments, The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has created SDG Impact as a flagship initiative to empower investors with clarity, insights and tools to achieve the SDGs. SDG Impact has developed an impact intelligence tool - the SDG Investor Maps. The SDG Investor Map is a flagship tool of SDG Impact at the disposition of Country Offices.  An SDG Investor Map is a piece of market intelligence managed/coordinated by UNDP Country Offices to help private investors (funds, financiers, corporations) identify investment opportunities and business models that advance the SDGs. The Maps provide the insight and tools needed by the private sector to increase their investments towards the SDGs. They can make a significant contribution to filling the financing gap by mobilizing private capital for the SDGs.

SDG Investor Maps are created using an established methodology which combines secondary data research (on existing development needs, policy priorities, and market opportunities) with interviews/discussions with public and private sector stakeholders to verify findings and contribute new insights. The data are analyzed to distill Investment Opportunity Areas and data-backed business models. The findings of the Investor Maps are synthesized in an Excel template and uploaded into a dynamic online platform (upcoming late 2020) where investors can search for the market intelligence on investment opportunities by a variety of functionalities, including sectors, regions, SDGs as well as return profiles, market size and timeframes of investments that most interest them.

The SDG investor mapping process will be taken forward in parallel with steps being taken by the Government of Thailand to establish a more holistic, public and private, approach to financing national sustainable development by operationalizing an integrated national financing framework and the two concurrent processes may inform one another. The lessons and results of the pilot in Thailand will also contribute to the continued refinement of the SDG Investor Mapping process globally, alongside the lessons from other pilot countries.

UNDP is seeking for an expert consult services to support the research, analysis, synthesis, and stakeholder interviews required to create the Thailand SDG Investor Map.

Duties and Responsibilities

SCOPE OF WORK

Overall responsibilities:

• Develop a detailed work plan for the completion of the work along the lines of the methodology described, to fit into the final deliverable Excel template;
• Undertake desk research (e.g. document review) and analysis across multiple steps of the Country Office Handbook methodology (sector analysis; subsector analysis; subregion analysis; investment opportunity area analysis) ;
• Undertake in-depth analysis of public and donor development statistics (e.g. human development databases, ease-of-doing-business data, private investment flows) at subsector and subregion level;
• Identify, assess and analyse the key data sources needed to complete the Mapping;
• Assess and utilize key information from the completed inception report of Thailand SDG Investor Map ;
• Identify the subregions where there is both high development need within each subsector, and strong political/financial momentum to spur potential subsector growth ;
• Highlight impactful business models within priority subsectors and subregions where new capital can facilitate scale, and identify potential ‘white spaces’ where new business models are most needed;
• Map out enabling environment in policy, regulatory, financial, partnership from the public sector perspective ;
• Map out risk factors i.e obstacles and negative externalities, from the public sector perspective
• Map out and propose a list of stakeholders for further consultations ;
• Engage relevant stakeholders who will provide oversight on this process;
• Provide technical support/coordinate on structured interviews with local investors to deepen learnings from desk research and source additional insights on the ‘investability’ of long-listed opportunity areas;
• Conduct stakeholder consultations with governmental agencies, international and foreign country development agencies, the private sector etc—to verify findings and make a recording the results of the interviews;
• Provide inputs to the policy and regulatory environment companion analysis to include recommendations for government; this includes inputs to the parallel Development Finance Assessment process to ensure complementarities in data alignment and analysis;
• Provide technical support/coordinate the collation of insights from multiple research sources into a master document, ensuring that data collected is of comparable breadth and depth (testing for the mutual-exclusiveness of datapoints);
• Report to the UNDP Project Lead as needed; and
• Perform other related duties as assigned

DURATION OF ASSIGNMENT, DUTY STATION AND EXPECTED PLACES OF TRAVEL

Duration of Assignment: 30 April 2021 – 30 September 2021 (5 months with up to 50 working days.)

Duty Station: Home-based, Thailand (no travel is required)

INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

The Consultant will be engaged on a short-term basis 50 working days (30 April 2021 – 30 September 2021) under the Individual Contract arrangement. The study will be delivered under the direct supervision of the Head of Exploration, UNDP Accelerator Lab Thailand.

DELIVERABLES AND FINAL PRODUCTS

Competencies

COMPETENCIES

Core competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism;
• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Functional competencies:

• Strong local networks: within the financial and corporate industries (banks, non-bank financial institutions, impact funds, HNWI, relevant philanthropies, development finance institutions), with relevant businesses, investment promotion agencies etc.
• Strong ongoing knowledge of market context, of national development needs, and economic/ political priorities
• Knowledge of the SDGs
• Knowledge of the local investment landscape, and close familiarity with needs of global investors
• Expertise in gathering and comprehensively analyzing country-level data as basis for identifying investment opportunities and developing data analytics on market sizing and defining key country hotspots
• Data analysis expertise, ideally with extensive expertise in research and an understanding of statistics
• Excellent advocacy skills relating to finance, business climate.
• Excellent analytical skills
• Ability to facilitate multi-stakeholder sessions
• Ability to navigate sensitive political environments
• Strong communication skills, including ability to produce high quality practical advisory reports and knowledge products

Required Skills and Experience

EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

Academic Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in economics, development, finance, accounting, business administration, data science or related field.

Years of experience:

• Minimum 3 years of professional experience in finance in emerging or low-income markets, sustainable or impact finance, impact investment, private sector engagement, business development in developing countries, investment research, statistics, analysis
• Proven experience of leading research in cooperation with international organizations or other bodies responsible for formulating and monitoring of public policies around sustainable finance.
• Experience of carrying out assessment and preparing reports on implementation of sustainable development goals (SDG);
• Strong ingoing knowledge of market context, of national development needs, and economic/ political priorities
• Familiarity with mixed methods research, particularly the navigation of statistical databases
• Familiarity with SDG Impact and with other activities undertaken in parallel to SDG Investor Maps (e.g. Impact Management, Impact Facilitation)
• Experience in the analysis and review of technical and legal documents such as policy documents and/or legal contracts; international agreements and conventions; economic and business-related reports and performance indicators; and
• Experience in liaising with public and private sector stakeholders and organizing and facilitating public and private sector stakeholder dialogue activities (workshops, round-table, discussions, etc.)
• Experience of working with international development agencies (donor and financial organizations, etc.)
• Experience with the Indonesian government and investor context would be an advantage.

Language:

• English (technical proficiency) and working knowledge of Thai would be an added advantage

PAYMENT TERMS

Consultant must send a financial proposal on professional fee based on Lump Sum amount. The total amount quoted shall be include all costs components to perform the deliverables identified in the TOR. The cost should include professional fee\and any other applicable cost to be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment.

The contract price will be fixed output-based price regardless of extension of the herein specified duration. Payments will be done upon completion of the deliverables/outputs and as per below.:

• First payment - 25% of total contract amount upon the completion of the first deliverable
• Second payment - 25% of total contract amount upon the completion of the second deliverable
• Third payment - 25% of total contract amount upon the completion of the third deliverable
• Forth payment - 25% of total contract amount upon the completion of the forth deliverable

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF THE BESET OFFER

The Individual Consultant will be evaluated based on the following methodology: Cumulative analysis

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted technical criteria (70%). and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 70 points)

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% of the total technical points would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

• Personal CV, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) and at least three (3) professional references;
• Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability and financial proposal using the template provided by UNDP.  Note: National consultants must quote prices in Thai Baht.

**Failure to submit the above-mentioned documents or Incomplete proposals shall result in disqualification

**Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application system only allows to upload maximum one document.

The shortlisted candidates may be contacted and the successful candidate will be notified.

ANNEXES:

Annex I - TOR
Annex II - General Terms and Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Individual Contractors
Annex III - Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability with Financial Proposal
Annex IV - P11 Form for ICs
 

All documents can also be downloaded from: UNDP Procurement Notice 

For any clarification regarding this assignment please write to procurement.th@undp.org under subject: JobAds 98283 – Data Analyst for SDG Investor Map Development.