It has recognized for a long time that there is a need to develop knowledge on biodiversity in biodiverse countries, particularly in the tropics. Their collections are an important component of that. Yet these collections could remain invisible to the rest of the scientific world; unused and likely to be lost. Being part of such a directory is just one of the many things we can do to make all collections useful to science. It makes it clear that they are part of global biodiversity infrastructure.
Along the same lines one would hope that the directory would be a hub for communication about collections, such as best practices, events, funding etc.