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 Financing for Development (FFD)
A first-ever ‘International Conference on Financing for Development’ is being
held in Monterrey, Mexico, from March 18-22, 2002, at the behest of the UN General
Assembly with the World Bank, IMF, WTO, UNDP and UNCTAD as the principal official
stakeholders. The goal is to holistically take on board the various issues affecting
development finance and to find innovative, efficient and urgent ways to finance poverty
alleviation and sustainable development. Extensive participation is expected from
Governments, international financial institutions, regional development bodies, civil
society and businesses - and outcomes are expected to feed into the WSSD meet at
Johannesburg. 5 regional meetings, several sectoral hearings and 4 prepcoms have
transpired, with the last PrepCom concluding on January 27, 2002. The conference agenda is
organised under six themes and outlined in the ‘Monterrey Consensus’, the main
draft for discussion, titled "Confronting the Challenges of Financing for
Development: A Global Response’:
- Mobilising domestic financial resources for development
- Mobilising international resources for development: foreign direct investment and other
private flows
- Leveraging international trade for development
- Increasing international financial cooperation for development through inter alia
official development assistance
- External debt
- Addressing systemic issues related to the international monetary, financial and trading
systems in support of development.
While the conference is expected to be unique in terms of its scale of participation
and scope in addressing the problem of mobilising enough resources for development
and poverty alleviation, concerns are already being raised. These relate, among other
things, to achieving environmentally ‘sustainable’ development, financing
global public goods, overcoming traditional institutional barriers to development finance
and reconciling Northern, Southern and global interests. A major determinant of the
conference’s success will be to what extent it is able to (in addition to
strengthening conventional finance through Official Development Assistance or ODA, Foreign
Direct Investment or FDI, trade/debt) push through ‘innovative’ financing
(such as a global tax like the Tobin tax or a carbon tax’) and integrate outcomes
with WSSD. Details on the conference are available at www.un.org/esa/ffd. |
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