DFI led a panel on monitoring the contribution of private and blended cooperation to the SDGs, involving stakeholders from the official, private and civil society sectors, at the DCF Symposium in Kampala. The session gave positive feedback on DCF plans to convene stakeholders to enhance monitoring of the effectiveness and impact of private and blended cooperation. The background study for the panel can be found here.

DFI presented the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IUP) study discussing why and how developing countries should have Aid Policies to improve the quality and effectiveness of their aid in producing development results. Discussions were held at a workshop organised just before the UN Development Cooperation Forum Symposium in Kampala.

DFI facilitated a week-long Seco-financed seminar where officials from the Central Bank of Sudan and Ministry of Finance discussed their technical conclusions about debt relief and new borrowing with colleagues from other government agencies, and then drafted a debt strategy document for Sudan covering the period 2016-18. The strategy will be discussed and approved at political level early in 2016.

The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) has published a new report which reveals a worrying failure in reaching education financing goals.

Taking stock of investment and aid levels in education since the goal-setting Dakar Education Forum fifteen years ago, Education Aid Watch 2015 checks delivery against promises made by donor countries and finds that they fall short of the pledged donor support for the Education For All and Millennium Development Goals.

In contrast, using GSW’s latest analysis of the budgets of 66 low-income and lower-middle-income countries, the report shows that more than half of aid recipient countries had increased the share of their budgets going to education since 2012.

The DFI/Government Spending Watch team provided resource people for two simultaneous Oxfam events to design programmes for fighting inequality. The first was a workshop in Nairobi for Kenya and Vietnam, which are soon launching major programmes on anti-inequality tax and spending policies funded by the Government of Finland; and the second was a regional workshop in Dakar for West Africa, planning a regional report on inequality, as well as programmes in 8 regional countries on tax and spending issues.  

Francophone Finance Ministers from LICs met on 8th October in Lima, Peru, in the margins of the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Amadou Ba, Minister of Economy, Finance and Planning of Senegal, represented by Mr. Abdoul Aziz Tall, Minister at the Presidency in charge of the Plan Sénégal Emergent, and co-chaired by Mr. François Maurice Gervais Rakotoarimanana, Minister of Finance and Budget of Madagascar.

DFI joined a World Bank MTDS mission to Malé, The Maldives. The mission took place at the request of the Ministry of Finance, and focused on providing technical assistance in debt management strategy formulation. The mission shared the Bank-Fund framework for Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS) development, and jointly with a government team, applied it to The Maldives. In the process, the team provided training on basic cost-risk analysis, data preparation, and preparation of a debt management strategy document.

DFI helped to coordinate this seminar for New Rules, which brought together experts from the IMF, World Bank, developing and developed country governments and the private sector. DFI also made a presentation on the need for fundamental global tax reform going beyond the BEPS initiative and the Addis FfD conference, and the implications for technical assistance needs for low and lower-middle income developing countries.

Did the Third International Conference on Financing for Development deliver and meet expectations? And how should the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) be financed?

In this blog hosted by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Matthew Martin reflects on the outcomes of the Conference held in Addis Ababa last July and its implications on the financing of the SGDs, and makes recommendations to ensure they are efficiently financed.  

Last month in New York, the first UN Principles on Sovereign Debt Restructuring Processes were unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly.

Agreed at the Ad Hoc Committee on Sovereign Debt Restructuring Processes, this set of nine principles builds on the UNCTAD Roadmap released earlier this year and is intended to guide future restructuring processes. It could serve as a basis for future deliberations in this area and seeks to limit the actions of vulture funds.

A formal UN GA Resolution is to be adopted during the next General Assembly, which will officially adopt the new UN principles by not just the Committee but the whole General Assembly, and mandate a follow up process.