From the International Monetary Fund:

• Countries need to make plans now for implementing the post-2015 agenda
• Increasing access to finance—particularly for women—will be vital
• Given collective nature of many issues, international cooperation is key

Marueen Burke writes:  Governments must take action at the country level and the collective level to mobilize resources and partner with the private sector if they are to attain the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, panelists said at a seminar.

“You really have to approach it in a comprehensive way,” noted Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University. As such, he said, each country ought to have a national dialogue about its own development goals and the interaction between these different goals.

For Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s Minister of Finance, revenue mobilization was seen as essential.

Akinwumi Adenisa, the newly appointed President the African Development Bank (AfDB), concurred. “Africa needs roughly $100 billion for investment in infrastructure. But right now we have only about $50 billion,” he observed. Multilateral development banks should be doing more to promote risk-sharing instruments that allow the private sector to lend significant amounts without shouldering excessive risk. “Risk sharing is what permits the AfDB to partner with the private sector,” he said.

While panelists agreed that private-public partnerships were a key factor in low-income countries’ development, some also noted that governments did not have to rely solely on external funding sources. “There is a lot of potential revenue in the country that countries could tap,” said IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu, noting that the IMF has devised a new “revenue gap analysis” tool that helps countries understand where the gaps are in their revenue collection.

There are ways of improving the tax efficiency by reducing tax exemptions and broadening the tax base, as Vietnam and Tanzania have done successfully.

Realistically, though, you can’t tax very poor people. Giving potential entrepreneurs access to finance is critical to giving a “leg up” to people in low-income countries.

Claver Gatete, Rwanda’s Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, also zeroed in on the role of governments in ensuring that women are active participants in the economy.

Beyond mobilizing revenue and facilitating the economic participation of women, there is still more to be done, said Tony Elumelu, a successful Nigerian entrepreneur. His country has benefitted from external resources by way of aid and by way of private flows, he said. While aid has helped address some of the continent’s issues, it has not helped significantly alleviate poverty or create jobs.

The answer, he said, is private investment—and preferably partnerships between local investors and international ones.

Zhu noted that the IMF is active in several ways. It has put more resources on the table by allowing low-income countries to borrow up to an additional fifty percent from the IMF’s concessional facilities at an interest rate of zero percent. It is also intensifying its policy dialogue with member countries and strengthening its efforts to help increase their institutional capacity, particularly in the context of the sustainable development goals.

As for the World Bank, Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer Bertrand Badré Badre explained:  “We have to work together. We can create additional resources, we can share innovation, and we have to make things easier for investors.”

Harm Bengen / East Friesland
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