Advocating Innovative Financing Solutions

Advocating Innovative Financing Solutions
Preparations are underway for the United Nations Third International
Conference on Financing for Development, to be held in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia between 13 and 16 July 2015. It is expected that delegates will
reaffirm commitments to development financing made in the first and
second conferences, held respectively in Monterrey, Mexico (2002) and
Doha, Qatar (2008), and review means of implementation.
This session, organised by the ECLAC subregional headquarters for the
Caribbean, focuses on the ways in which the Caribbean as small
vulnerable states may benefit from both domestic and international
Financing for Development (FFD) in light of the emerging global,
regional and domestic financing architecture.
There is already a zero draft outcome document which sets out some of
the principles that will govern the financial arrangements for meeting
the sustainable development goals. While the negotiations are in train,
a number of issues are already on the table. The zero draft reaffirms
the need to address the issues of Small Island Developing States (SIDS),
given their fragility and vulnerability and focuses on a variety of
dimensions. Among these are the elevated role of domestic financing
including the role of the diaspora, the role of the international partners
in assisting SIDS, the future of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)
and how the middle income countries will feature in this context.
Implicit in the set of documents that have emerged is the assumption
that finance is no longer a binding constraint. The question is how to
channel existing funds to advance sustainable development. While it is
true that given the developmental needs, resources are not available
from a Caribbean SIDS perspective, the flow of resources are also not
equitable, by either sector or region.
Among the challenges are the considerable debt problem which has
narrowed the fiscal space, and reduced the countries access to
international finance.
For many Caribbean countries, their
categorisation as middle income states has meant a reduced access to
concessional finance and the option of sources which are quite
expensive. In the face of the debt problem compounded with low
growth, the Caribbean is hard pressed to maintain its current living
standards and to finance programs of social protection. In some
quarters including ECLAC, it is being suggested that debt relief is an
important vehicle for the region to maintain its development trajectory.
In the Samoa pathway, it is acknowledged that SIDS are responsible for
their own development, however, the principle of common but
differential responsibility requires that there is the need for relief to
address these immediate and ongoing challenges. Apart from the debt
issue the region faces a number of additional challenges including lack
of access to resources for adaptation to climate change, inadequate
insurance to address losses from extreme events and what ECLAC
refers to as “structural gaps” in a range of areas, such as education,
health and the technical capacity needed to transform production and
increase its productivity. This session examines the key issues in FFD
including innovative financing and among the questions to be
addressed are the following:
•
How should the Caribbean strategize to improve its access to
financial resources including Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)?
•
What development indicators (new and existing) besides GDP per
capita could be used to present an argument for concessional finance?
•
How can we shift the emphasis of development organisations
from the short term delivery of results given the long term nature of
sustainable development?
•
How can regulations be improved to access financial flows
between development organizations and governments in the region?
•
How can the region address its current debt problems in a
sustainable manner?
•
What are the new strategies, partnerships and policy options to
overcome the debt challenge?
•
How stable is the banking system in the Caribbean and is the
current structure adequate for financing economic transformation?
•
How can blended financing help in achieving fiscal sustainability?
 How to raise domestic and international financial resource for
sustainable development and what is the role of regional
development banks?
In keeping with the theme of the conference on disruptive thinking it is
hoped that new and concrete ideas will help to address the financing
challenges of the region.