By Laura Contemori – ROME (Econostream) – German state-owned development bank KfW on Thursday increased its 2026 funding target to €80-85 billion from €75-80 billion, reflecting strong domestic promotional business and an expected positive trend in coming months.

The bank raised €58 billion in the international capital markets in the first half of 2026.

“Our higher funding target is above all an expression of our very successful promotional business,” KfW Treasurer Tim Armbruster said. “In the first half of the year, we once again demonstrated that we can reliably place large volumes even in a market environment characterized by uncertainty.”

KfW said the euro remained its most important funding currency, accounting for around 60% of first-half issuance, while the US dollar accounted for 22%.

The bank also issued in nine other currencies, including a benchmark-sized HK$6 billion bond that it said was the largest bond ever issued by a European public issuer in the emerging “Wonton” market.

In the green segment, KfW placed 11 green bonds in six currencies in the first half, raising around €12.6 billion in net proceeds. The total included two large-volume euro benchmark bonds of €5 billion each, with another such issue planned for the second half of the year.

For the second half of 2026, KfW plans further issues amounting to around €22-27 billion, with euro and US dollar issuance still expected to play the central role.

KfW also highlighted its growing involvement in digital capital market infrastructure, saying it had participated in several distributed ledger technology-based pilot transactions as both issuer and investor.

These included Project Sovereign with the Bank of Greece and SWIAT, acquisitions of crypto securities issued by DZ Bank and the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, and the issuance of its third digital bond under Germany’s Electronic Securities Act.