The story
In the American effort to rebuild Europe following World War II, it became clear to the policymakers that private investment is a powerful generator of economic development and that there is an appropriate role for government in encouraging private investment where it has the potential to do the most good. Accordingly, the Marshall Plan authorized the U.S. government to ensure private U.S. investors against the risk that earnings generated overseas in foreign currencies might not be convertible into U.S. dollars. This new tool—political risk insurance—was expanded in the 1950s to cover losses from war and expropriation, as well as government interference with investors' rights to the proceeds of their investments. It was subsequently complemented with the addition of project financing.
In 1966, Congress established the International Private Investment Advisory Council (IPIAC) under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1966. In December 1968, IPIAC published "The Case for a U.S. Overseas Private Enterprise Development Corporation", a report articulating the need for such an entity. The IPIAC in the report recommended the organization of an overseas private enterprise development corporation of the United States and also funded by it, as responsive to the Javits Amendment to the 1968 Foreign Assistance Act.
As the administration of the U.S. guaranty program moved among various agencies, bipartisan support grew to establish it on a permanent basis as a self-sustaining, independent agency.
The most original of [President Nixon's] recommendations is the one dealing with the establishment of an Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Even opponents of foreign aid agree, I feel sure, that the burden of our international development program can and should be shifted increasingly from public to private resources. The Administration's proposal to set up a Corporation has as its basic objective stimulation of American businessmen into examining the possibility of profitable and productive enterprises in countries hungry for development.
I believe OPIC means business—a businesslike approach to foreign aid. After all, the profit motive was the prime mover in our own Nation's development. Why not use this profit motive in helping the development of others?
[OPIC is the] first really big initiative that has come along in the foreign aid field almost since it began, which goes back to 1948 and 1949... this corporation will for the first time apply business methods and business accounting procedures to the business operations of project development, investment, insurance, guarantees and direct lending—that is, to private activities which are sensitively and directly geared into the development of the less-developed areas which we propose to help in the foreign aid program.
Congress created OPIC in 1969 through an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, and the agency began operations in 1971, during the Nixon administration, with a portfolio of $8.4 billion in political risk insurance and $169 million in loan guaranties. In a special message to Congress in 1971, President Nixon stated that OPIC's establishment will help "give new direction to U.S. private investment abroad... and provide new focus to our foreign assistance effort."
Organized as a corporation with a corporate structure, OPIC was governed by a board of directors, president and CEO, and executive vice president, all nominated by the president of the United States and approved by the U.S. Senate. The majority of the board of directors, including its president, were "drawn from private life and have business experience." Although it operated on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to American taxpayers, OPIC was appropriated administrative funding, and reauthorized on a regular basis, by the U.S. Congress.
From Wikipedia’s article on Overseas Private Investment Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5