ECOSOC President Marjatta Rasi (left) addresses the meeting. With her is United Nations head Kofi Annan.
| Author | Patrick Cirillo and Jones Morco |
| Position | IMF Secretary's Department, and Axel Palmason, IMF Office, United Nations |
| Pages | 160 |
Page 160
On April 26, the United Nations (UN) Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) met for the seventh annual high-level dialogue with the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The meeting, which took place at UN headquarters in New York City, took up issues related to maintaining the political momentum for implementing the Monterrey Consensus and achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
On their way home from the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, ministers of finance and development stopped in New York City for a day-long session with UN delegates, senior officials, and executive board directors from international organizations (including the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development) and with representatives from civil society organizations and the private sector. With the aim of bolstering "coherence, coordination, and cooperation" among international agencies and other development partners, the delegates used small, interactive roundtables to address three topics: the effect of private investment and trade-related issues on financing for development, the role of multilateral institutions in reaching the MDGs, and debt sustainability and debt relief.
In their discussions of private investment and trade-related issues, delegates emphasized the benefits that better market access for developing countries can confer on efforts to reach the MDGs. Participants broadly welcomed the IMF's recent establishment of the Trade Integration Mechanism (see IMF Survey, May 17, page 135) and generally expressed support for the IMF's review of the fiscal treatment of infrastructure and public-private partnerships. They agreed that higher saving and investment, more efficient use of resources, and greater private sector development are needed in developing countries if they are to reach the MDGs by the target date of 2015. Delegates also reiterated their call to developed countries to meet their official development assistance target of 0.7 percent of gross national income and asked all development partners to increase aid effectiveness.
In their discussion of debt sustainability, delegates made it clear that sustainable debt was not an end in itself but an essential element...
To continue reading
Request your trial