Global IssuesIMF Steps Up Lending to Achieve Sustainable Development
WASHINGTON, Jul 13 (IPS) - As the Third International Conference on Financing for Development opens in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Monday, all eyes are on the United Nation's post-2015 development agenda, billed as the most ambitious and far-reaching poverty eradication plan in the organisation's history.
On the eve of the conference, on Jul. 10, some of the world's leading development banks announced plans to extend 400 billion dollars in financing towards the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) over a three-year period.
The African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank Group (referred to as the MDBs), together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have also "vowed to work more closely with private and public sector partners to help mobilize the resources needed to meet the historic challenge of achieving the SDGs", said a press release issued this past weekend.
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, announced here in Washington on Jul. 8 that the Fund has decided to increase developing nations' access to credit to promote sustainable growth.
The changes, approved by the IMF executive board on Jul. 1, will expand concessional facilities - money-lending mechanisms – to developing countries by 50 percent.
More aid will be targeted at poor and vulnerable countries, and the IMF will maintain a zero-percent interest rate on rapid credit facility loans to fragile states and countries hit by natural disasters
Lagarde referred to three major international conferences – including the financing conference underway in Ethiopia, the U.N. summit slated to take place in New York City in September, and the year-end climate negotiations scheduled to be held in Paris – as "rare windows of opportunities" for the international community, including the IMF, to help developing countries achieve the SDGs.
"These three combined can help us change the music," she said. "We have a chance to collectively take a new approach."
First laid out in the Rio+20 summit in 2012, the SDGs currently comprise 17 goals, ranging from reducing poverty and inequality to combating climate change. They are expected to form the global blueprint from which member states will derive their national policies over the next 15 years.
The goals come on the heels of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight poverty reduction targets set out in 2000 that will expire by the end of this year.
Many are worried that the SDGs are too broad and may be costly.
A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing released in August 2014 puts the estimate of eradicating extreme poverty in all countries, one of the goals, at around 66 billion dollars annually.
The cost of investments required to achieve "climate-compatible" scenarios may go up to several trillion dollars per year.
United Nations Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs Wu Hongbo said in an IMF Survey published on Apr. 18 that achieving the SDGs will cost more than the MDGs.
"In addition to eradicating poverty, this agenda will cover economic, social and environmental issues, so huge amounts of financial resources will be required for its implementation," he said.
Other than international aid, the report calls for the use of private resources, partnerships and innovative mechanisms to finance implementation of the SDGs.
But international aid is still crucial for many least developed countries, especially nations on the African continent and landlocked developing states.
In 1970, a target was set for developed countries to allocate 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income (GNI) as Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries. However, only five developed countries from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have reached the target so far.
ODA is the measure of resource flows to developing countries for economic development and welfare.
Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. said in a blog post on Jul. 7 that aid flows alone could not float the multi-trillion-dollar price tag of the SDGs.
"The truth is that development is no longer mostly about aid," he said.
He referred to remittances from migrants living overseas, foreign direct investment and private lending to developing countries as well as domestic government revenues as other lucrative sources of financing.
The IMF has contributed to the goals by providing advice, assistance and lending to the countries.
Lagarde said that the IMF will focus on mobilising domestic revenue, especially through increasing the tax ratios in developing countries. She said that tax ratios in developing countries are below 15 percent in comparison to the OECD average of 34 percent.
"Money raised in that simple, fair and broad-based system and well spent on the right policies can be a game changer," she said.
Eliminating inefficiency by combating corruption and untargeted subsidies was another IMF goal. Around 30 percent of public spending is lost due to inefficiencies in the public investment process, she said.
"They can't do it by themselves," Lagarde said. "If the international community participates in that effort, it will go a lot further."
Edited by Kanya D'Almeida
© Inter Press Service (2015) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service