Roundup: UN report calls for coherent policies that can channel finance for sustainable development

At the international level, there is a need for coherent set of rules and policies that can channel finance to support sustainable development, leaving sufficient policy space for countries to pursue their chosen development model, said a UN report released here on Wednesday.

The report, the World Economic and Prospects 2016, pointed out although the amount of financing needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is vast, global public and private savings would be sufficient, "if the financial system were to effectively intermediate savings and investments" in line with the goals.

The SDGs are a set of development goals which are adopted last September by world leaders at the UN headquarters, aiming to end poverty and hunger, achieve gender equality, fight inequalities and tackle climate change so as to achieve sustainable development for all.

"The world requires action at both the national and international levels to simultaneously finance sustainable development and to develop sustainable finance," said the report, noting nationally, countries need to craft sustainable development financing strategies, based on their national developmental models.

"These strategies should seek to unlock the potential of people and the private sector, and incentivize changes in consumption, production and investment patterns to support sustainable development," it added.

Financing for development has been a major topic discussed during UN meetings on sustainable development. Last year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, UN member states adopted a new global framework for financing sustainable development, as well as a comprehensive set of policy actions with a package of over 100 concrete measures that draw upon all sources of finance.

The new financing framework includes the transfer of resources to developing countries in the form of foreign private capital inflows, official development assistance and other forms of international cooperation.

In this regard, the report finds out that net resource transfers to developing countries as a whole have been negative, implying that resources are flowing from developing to developed countries.

It concludes that the existing international financial system "does not adequately allocate resources for long term development needs," and vulnerabilities and instability in the system pose risks to the real economy and sustainable development.

Therefore, to achieve the aims in sustainable development agenda, a more inclusive form of global coordination, which can better reflect the ideal of the global partnership set in the agenda, is strongly needed, said the report.

The World Economic Situation and Prospects 2016 report, with its first chapter unveiled last December, predicated that the world economy is projected to grow by 2.9 percent in 2016 and 3.2 percent in 2017 due to a number of cyclical and structural headwinds. The full report is available on Wednesday and provides with more findings on international trade and regional developments. Enditem