European Investment Bank chairs MDBs/IMF meeting to back new UN development agenda
The leading Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and the International Monetary Fund, under the chairmanship of European Investment Bank, expressed their readiness to support the United Nations as it maps out a new development agenda to succeed the Millennium Development Goal targets of 2015 (MDGs). The MDBs agreed to organise a summit in the margins of the IMF/World Bank spring meetings in 2015 to make concrete proposals to the UN to foster sustainable development and the best ways to mobilise the required financing.
Their pledge follows talks they held with Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon in which they agreed to participate in a planned international conference on financing for development. The conference will be launched by the UN in 2015 or 2016. Leaders also voiced their support for a more encompassing agenda which takes into account the social, environmental, and economic aspects of development.
Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank and Chair of the meeting, emphasised the need to work towards shared growth in order to avoid excessive inequalities. He said: “Inclusive economic growth is a key driver of job creation and poverty reduction. The recent fiscal crisis has brought to the fore the limits of States as drivers of investment, and the importance of bringing in the private sector using MDBs as catalysts. With this background, it is clear that the MDBs, as a group, do have an important dual role to play, in both helping frame the debate and in subsequently implementing it.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon underlined during the meeting that progress has been made toward agreeing on a post-2015 development agenda and that a set of sustainable development goals would be agreed upon over the next few months. He expects the new agenda to go far beyond the current MDGs and he encouraged the MDBs to actively contribute to the process, each leveraging their comparative advantage, individual knowledge, and experience.
President Hoyer reassured that the practical experience of MDBs in financing development, together with their respective operating procedures and norms and monitoring processes will help to ground the post-2015 debate in the real world. “As public institutions, we pursue ambitious development objectives, but we also bring our experience and expertise, our financial strength and our capacity to blend public and private resources.”
In addition, the IMF could further intensify its efforts to support developing countries in enhancing domestic resource mobilization, including from natural resource sectors. Case studies of countries that have sustained strong growth over an extended period would help inform discussions on how particular forms of financing can successfully contribute to development. Participating in the meeting were in addition to UN-SG Ban Ki-Moon and EIB President Werner Hoyer the heads of African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Inter-American Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, and World Bank Group, and a senior official from the IMF.
