Ethiopia: worldwide Conference on Financing for Development Kicks off Today

With growth slowing in the West, developed nations are shifting funds away from basic development funding to climate-linked projects.

Lastly, he reiterated the need for countries to be ready to adapt to new challenges as they arose, saying that, though some of these challenges, such as demographics, technology, and the environment, were well-known, their future ramifications were not.

“In a world in which both the global population and resource constraints are growing, development finance needs a reboot”.

“But, without resources, commitments will amount to little more than promises on paper”, said Ban stressing no one should be left behind.

Preparatory talks in New York failed to yield an agreement on a common summit outcome, with rich nations – many of which are embroiled in their own financing problems and reluctant to up their aid budgets – pushing for greater private sector involvement and for emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India to share the burden.

The eight UN Millennium Development Goals from year 2000 expiring this year will be replaced by a new set of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals aimed to drive development efforts around the world.

“We need to support the World Health Organization to become stronger so that it will be able to mitigate communicable diseases, such as Ebola”, he said, “as millions will die and $5 trillion will be lost if any communicable disease occurs”.

The document, in his view, presented a regression with what was agreed at the two previous financing for development conferences, in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002 and in Doha, Qatar, in 2008.

The panel on global finance will be led by UNEP’s Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System.

According to documents seen by EUobserver, ministers could agree a communique stating that “blended finance instruments including PPPs serve to lower investment specific risks and incentivise additional private sector finance across key development sectors”. The level of collaboration among the MDBs in preparing the Financing for Development conference has been unprecedented, in coming up with innovative solutions to scale up development financing.

In his intervention during the panel discussion, Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin of the World Bank, stated that there are several advantages provided by Islamic financial services, and that is why the World Bank is paying significant attention to them.

– Kenya has the world’s highest penetration of bankless payment transactions, which has allowed it to achieve the most rapid increase of financial inclusion ever recorded, globally.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF, said that 2015 marks a once-in-a-generation opportunity for global development. But we recognize that we must go beyond BEPS and address broader issues related to the fiscally costly tax incentives found in investment, mining, and petroleum codes. The IMF-with its global membership and mandate to promote economic growth and stability-is a committed partner.

Tourism’s cross-cutting nature and multiple links to other economic sectors positions it as an effective multiplier in global development strategies as tourism often provides one of the few competitive options for developing countries to take part in the global economy. “The Action Agenda takes a small but important step in improving worldwide cooperation on tax matters”. Thus, African governments must seize this opportunity to advocate for increased financing for sustainable development, building on the mobilization of more significant domestic revenue.

An ongoing United Nations development financing conference in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, is expected to achieve a successful outcome that will put in place a financial framework for sustainable development worldwide, said a top United Nations official to Xinhua.