Distinguished delegates,
Excellencies,
Dear colleagues of all 缅北禁地and other entities,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to this side event on Accelerating SDG Progress through National Financing Strategies and INFFs.
Our progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is seriously off track. With the global economy threatened by multiple shocks, developing countries are disproportionately affected, at high risk of debt distress and financial instability.
In this moment of multiple and cascading crises, a strategic and risk-informed approach to financing the SDGs is indispensable. We think that integrated financing frameworks (INFFs) can play a critical role in this regard.
Excellencies,
The Secretary-General has called for an SDG Stimulus to tackle the high cost of debt and rising risks of debt distress, massively scale up affordable long-term financing for development, and expand contingency financing to countries in need.
Launched in February this year, the SDG Stimulus calls for at least 500 billion US dollars per year to close the “great finance divide”.
A significant increase in the supply of long-term financing must be matched by effective country capacity to absorb additional funds. The SDG Stimulus thus highlights the need for national ownership and assigns a prominent role to INFFs for operationalizing the Stimulus at the national level.
INFFs were first introduced in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in 2015. At the time, a majority of national sustainable development strategies did not include details on how the plans would be financed. Yet, without financing, SDG plans would remain a vision rather than a vehicle for change. INFFs helped to address this gap.
INFFs are a simple idea. They help countries incorporate financing in national planning and ensure that all financing policies take the Sustainable Development Goals into account.
They are a powerful tool to operationalise the SDG stimulus at the country level.
First, they help countries mobilize additional resources. This can include revenue strategies to raise public resources; financial sector development strategies and investment plans to raise private resources; and a strategic framework to help strengthen the impact of development cooperation.
Second, they enhance coherence across different financing policies, so that trade-offs can be managed and synergies exploited.
Third, INFFs can help countries better manage risk in an increasingly complex financing landscape. They can increase resilience to shocks, such as from climate-related events and pandemics.
Fourth, they can make SDG financing more predictable by tying financing and budgeting to long-term priorities.
Since their launch in 2015, INFFs have increasingly gained momentum. Over 85 countries have now embarked on designing and implementing INFFs, with 265 financing reforms being prioritized.
As DESA, we are proud to support these countries, together with UNDP, UNICEF, the OECD and others, and have developed a growing body of knowledge products – from e-learning courses to sectoral guidance.
The knowledge products are developed in close collaboration with our INFF Facility partners. As more and more countries make use of INFFs to address financing challenges, we see the increasing importance of continuing to support knowledge exchange and regional and global learning as one 缅北禁地system.
I am looking forward to the discussions today, to learn from our key stakeholders how the INFFs approach has been applied in their sustainable financing journey, and how countries are using this approach to accelerate their SDG progress.
I wish you a fruitful and insightful event today.
Thank you for your attention.