Category: Development finance

Development finance, Policy, Reviving multilateralism, SDGs

It is time for a new finance paradigm in development

DEV-IN-TRANS-BANNER

By Arthur R Wood, Founding Partner, Total Impact Advisors; Convenor, Project1800.org

This blog is part of an ongoing series evaluating various facets of Development in Transition. The 2019 “Perspectives on Global Development” on “Rethinking Development Strategies” will add to this discussion

On 27 November 1095, Pope Urban declared the crusades ostensibly a religious call, but one that reinforced the power of the spiritual over the temporal. To support the crusades, the church built a financial institution by leveraging the Templars under the Papal bull Omnes Datum Optimum, creating a monastic banking system that gave birth to such financial innovations as letters of credit, banking and, by extension, fiduciary products like trusts.

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Development finance

Development Finance 2.0: From Billions to Trillions

By Harald Hirschhofer, Senior Advisor, TCX [1] 

development-financeAchieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require an enormous increase in external financing flows to developing countries. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) have gradually started to shift their business model towards de-risking services to crowd in long-term, low-risk private capital. However, the targeted scaling up of private investment from billions to trillions to realise the SDGs contains massive risks for stability. And good macro-policies are needed, in turn, to address such underlying risks. Countries that need the greatest amount of development finance are often those that have domestic financial resource constraints and underdeveloped markets. Financing their growth and investment opportunities makes the management of exchange rate risks, which are inherent in development finance, a critical challenge.
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Development finance, SDGs

Multilateral action for sustainable development: How to build on the strength of ODA?

By Jorge Moreira da Silva, Director, Development Co-operation Directorate and Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Chair, Development Assistance Committee

In the backlash against globalisation and multilateralism and despite tightening national budgets, OECD countries’ combined Official Development Assistance (ODA) remains strong. While some criticise recently-released ODA figures for stagnating, steady commitment has been undeniable.

Indeed, ODA has remained politically resilient, steadily increasing since the turn of the century and doubling since 2000. In 2017, net ODA stood at USD 146.6 billion or 0.31% of gross national income (GNI). While this aggregate figure reflects a slight drop of 0.6% compared to 2016, previous figures were artificially high due to the refugee crisis that increased donor spending within their own borders. That spending subsided this year, and when in-country refugee costs are excluded, ODA increased by 1.1% from 2016 in real terms.

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Lia Beyeler
Africa, Country systems, Development finance

Statebuilding without the State: Getting beyond “chicken and egg” in Somalia

By Dan Honig, Assistant Professor of International Development, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Sarah Louise Cramer, UN-World Bank Aid Coordination Officer for Somalia

“The credibility of the Somali Government hinges largely on its ability to deliver for the Somali People.” International partners clearly recognise the importance of using country systems to achieve broader statebuilding goals, as this line, taken from the May 2017 Communiqué of the London Conference on Somalia, indicates. Yet, international partners continue to deliver aid primarily through parallel systems, as the Government struggles to raise sufficient domestic revenue to deliver tangible results for its people.

DW: Lessons for Peace in Somalia 

Of an estimated USD 1.75 billion in official development assistance (ODA) for Somalia in 2017, only USD 103.9 million was delivered on budget (approximately 6% of total ODA). Excluding humanitarian aid from this calculation, the proportion of on budget aid rises to 14%, which still lags significantly behind the use of country systems in other fragile states. For example, donors delivered between 28-44% of development-focused aid on budget in the Central African Republic, Mali and Liberia in 2015.[1]

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Lia Beyeler3 Comments
Development finance

The New World of Development Foundations

By Simon Scott, Counsellor, OECD Statistics and Data Directorate

philanthropy-cover

One of the compensations of growing old is that you may eventually find out what you always wanted to know.

Fifteen years ago I wrote an OECD study on Philanthropic Foundations and Development Co-operation which – despite its many glowing virtues – was decidedly thin on systematic financial and sectoral detail. Most of all, I found it almost impossible to get a handle on what the biggest development philanthropy of all, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was up to.

Now, in my dotage, my questions are answered by an excellent new study, Private Philanthropy for Development, a joint project of the OECD’s Development Centre and Development Co-operation Directorate.

How large is private philanthropy’s financial contribution to development? Answer: USD 24 billion from 2013 to 2015 inclusive, or USD 8 billion a year. What is the share of the Gates Foundation? 49%, which goes mostly to health, with agriculture next. And, by the way, the authors of these figures are not just guessing: they developed a special new data survey completed by 77 philanthropies and also gathered publically available information on many more. All the data – partly aggregated to protect confidentiality – are available here, and constitute a major new information resource.

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Development Matters
Development finance, SDGs

Who will end global poverty?

By Michael Sheldrick, Vice President of Global Policy and Government Affairs, Global Citizen 1

shutterstock_249974521For the second year in a row, the Trump Administration has proposed slashing U.S. development assistance programs by almost a third. Even though strong support on both sides of the U.S. Congress may prevent many – but not all – of these cuts becoming law, it is clear that the best hope for this period may be maintaining current levels of support. As the largest donor country, U.S. leadership on foreign aid is incredibly impactful. For example, based on our experience at Global Citizen, business leaders and policy makers announced 390 collective commitments in response to campaigns we either led or supported between 2012 and 2017. These commitments totaled more than USD 35 billion with nearly half of that, USD 15 billion, coming from just 5 countries, including the United States. And of the total number of new commitments, the United States makes up a nearly a quarter. In fact, the United States has been one of the largest contributors to many of the causes we champion, be it polio eradication, water and sanitation, or food aid.
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Development Matters
Development finance, Green transition, Policy

Maximising the public-private investment multiplier

By Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet, Professors at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellows at the FERDI
 

Development-finance

At the FERDI-IDDRI conference on “Development, Climate and Security” held in Paris on January 15, 2018, Barbara Buchner from the Climate Policy Initiative reported on the state of global climate finance flows for mitigation and adaptation. She made two points. First, finance is under-invested to combat climate change if the COP21 target in temperature increase is to be met. Second, private investment’s role in complementing public investment in climate finance is large, with an estimated 2/3 private for 1/3 public in current total contributions. This stresses the fundamental part private investment can play in meeting the COP21 objectives, particularly at a time when governments face multiple demands on public expenditures.

With public investment targeted to induce private investment, this raises the issue of public investment’s effect as a private investment multiplier. A useful way of thinking about the under-investment issue is consequently how to target public investment to maximise the public-private investment multiplier.

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Development finance

Promoting innovation: Lessons from the Global Fund

By Guido Schmidt-Traub, Executive Director, Sustainable Development Solutions Network

funding-health

Since its inception in 2001, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has become a highly respected pooled financing institution that scores top marks in independent reviews.1, 2

It has disbursed some USD 40 billion in grants for complex disease control and treatment programmes in fragile and non-fragile countries alike.

Success was far from assured in 2001, as developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, faced a perfect storm of surging HIV/AIDS, multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis and surging malaria deaths. Control and treatment interventions were available in high-income countries, but no one knew how to tackle the diseases in resource-poor settings. In particular, HIV/AIDS treatment was deemed impossible in Africa and was outside recommended approaches for tackling the disease.3

The Global Fund was designed precisely to tackle the lack of quality programmes and implementation mechanisms in developing countries. All too often, however, it is seen as just another funding mechanism. Many reviews lump it together with other multilateral mechanisms and trust funds.4

This is a mistake. The Global Fund has unique design principles that set it apart from bi- and multilateral financing mechanisms with the notable exception of Gavi.5

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Development finance, SDGs

Reflections on scaling up financing for development

By Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee

Blended Finance Watering CanSpending last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos and today in the Private Finance for Sustainable Development conference, my head is spinning with financing for development issues.

Chairing the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), I often find myself reminding members to uphold their aid levels and to use their public finance resources to stimulate private capital for sustainable development.

It’s a balancing act. Governments risk being accused of shying away from commitments when we talk too much about the “innovative financing tools” and about involving the private sector for development outcomes. It is true that upholding aid levels and directing them to countries most in need will continue to be important to leave no one behind. However, OECD countries must continue to move from talking to taking action when it comes to stimulating private finance.

Why? Faced with an estimated USD 2-3 trillion annual funding gap for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, public or philanthropic capital will be able to meet only half of it; opportunities for the private sector, thus, are significant.

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Lia Beyeler
Development finance, Green transition, Latin America and the Caribbean, SDGs

Bridging the green investment gap in Latin America: what role for national development finance institutions?

By Maria Netto, Lead Capital Markets and Financial Institutions Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank, and Naeeda Crishna Morgado, Policy Analyst – Green Growth and Investment, OECD              

Green-investmentThe developing world urgently needs more and better infrastructure. Affordable and accessible water supply systems, electricity grids, power plants and transport networks are critical to reducing poverty and ensuring economic growth. The way new infrastructure is built over the next 10 years will determine if we meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement objectives. Considering the long lifespan of most infrastructure projects, the decisions developing countries make about how they build infrastructure are critical: we can either lock-in carbon intensive and polluting forms of infrastructure, or ‘leap frog’ towards more sustainable pathways.

Many countries in Latin America are making this shift: thirty-two of them have committed to cut their emissions and improve the climate resilience of their economies, in infrastructure and other sectors, through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The cost is estimated at a staggering USD 80 billion per year over the next decade, roughly three times what these countries currently spend on climate-related activities. What is more, this is in addition to a wide investment gap for delivering development projects and infrastructure overall – the World Bank estimates that  countries in Latin America spend the least on infrastructure among developing regions in the world.
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