Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday that poor access to developmental finance is hindering developing economies from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She stressed the need to urgently address the annual financing gap of US$ 4,000 billion in this regard. At the third ‘Voice of Global South’ conference held digitally, she said that recent reports show that the implementation of many SDGs in developing economies is stagnating, while some indicators are also going backwards.
1 in 4 developing countries will be poorer than before
Sitharaman said the SDG financing gap for developing countries is estimated to be $4,000 billion annually. She said the Global South is affected by global uncertainties, and a recent World Bank report suggests one in four developing countries will be poorer by the end of this year than they were before the pandemic. “Growth is thus insufficient to drive progress in development and poverty eradication. There is an urgent need to address the $4,000 billion financing gap to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals,” she said.
Sustainable Finance Technical Assistance Action Plan
The Finance Minister said that during India’s G20 presidency, it was recommended to widely adopt social impact instruments and other blended finance tools, monitoring and measurement frameworks and risk mitigation measures. “Our efforts also led to the G20 Sustainable Finance Technical Assistance Action Plan, which is now being implemented under Brazil’s presidency. It aims to enhance sustainable finance according to the needs of the Global South,” she said. Talking about reforms in multilateral development banks, Sitharaman said these institutions need to be comprehensively revamped so that they can help developing countries meet their growth needs.
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