From Rhetoric to Reality: Decisive Action Needed on Development Goals

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

Ready for Takeoff: Implementing the Post-2015 Development Agenda brought together policymakers, academics, as well as representatives from the private sector and international organizations to discuss how best to catalyze action on the sustainable development goals, adopted in September, which will serve as the guidepost for global development over the next 15 years.

“It’s not hard to make promises, but delivering on them is much more difficult,” said IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde in opening remarks at the seminar, which took place during the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Lima, Peru.

Public money not enough

Moderator Nikiwe Bikitsha, a South African journalist, began the debate by asking how panelists viewed as the key priorities of the post-2015 development agenda.

“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. “Public money is never going to be enough to reach the goals—we also have to work with the private sector to leverage public money.”

Akinwumi Adesina, 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.

Mobilizing domestic revenue

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.

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