IF affluent countries had consistently met their official development assistance (ODA) targets for the past 14 years, the United Nations said, developing countries would have more means to bankroll Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) said developed countries aimed to extend 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) for ODA in 2002, and if rich countries only met this target, developing countries would have been able to access $2 trillion worth of development financing.
“The Sustainable Development Goals represent the outcome of long, serious discussions on how we want our world to look in 2030, but this vision needs serious finance,” Unctad Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi said.
“The 0.7-percent target will be a hard sell for many rich governments, but these are a daring, ambitious set of goals, and they require an equally ambitious response,” he said.
In the Philippines alone, ODA has been on the decline for more than 10 years. In the second quarter of 2015 ODA data, total net commitment of the loans portfolio decreased to $47.98 million in June 2015, compared to $9.84 billion in the same month of 2015.
In 2015 the international community tasked Unctad and four other organizations to identify the means to finance the SDGs, through its Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
Multilateral development banks (MDBs) and private institutions disclosed that they are making available at least $400 billion in the next three years to help countries achieve the SDGs by 2030.
MDBs, such as the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and others, will pool some $400 billion in the next three years to support the world’s post-2015 agenda.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) also disclosed that three blended finance initiatives, with a collective amount of $100 billion over the next five years, was launched at the United Nations Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa on July 15.
The MDBs said they are willing to invest $2 to $5 more for every $1 they directly invest in private-sector operations. MDB development finance has grown from $50 billion in 2001 to $127 billion in 2015.
The other organizations are the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.
Meeting the SDGs require funds to finance projects and programs, as well as obtain data for new indicators, particularly in providing information according to six major classifications.
In an interview with the BusinessMirror, National Statistician Lisa Grace Bersales earlier said these classifications are gender; ethnicity, or according to Christians and/or Muslims; indigenous peoples; persons with disabilities; socioeconomic; and geographic location.
Bersales added that there is another classification, race, which is not going to be part of the SDG monitoring in the Philippines.
The SDGs are composed of 17 goals, with around 169 targets, with 230 global indicators adopted in September 2015.
“The global community has major gaps in its data and must find ways to use the existing data much better,” Unctad Head of Statistics Steve MacFeely said.