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EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti (centre) with other Multilateral Development Bank heads in Addis Ababa.
Policies, institutions, long-term thinking and leadership vital, says Sir Suma Chakrabarti
EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti today stressed the importance of strong policies, solid institutions, long-term thinking and political leadership in ensuring finance for the next generation’s development goals.
Sir Suma was speaking at a side event for heads of multilateral development banks (MDBs) at the Addis Ababa Financing for Development conference.
The conference is focussing on how the global community will pay for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the international community is due to adopt at the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly later this year.
MDBs and the IMF last week announced plans to extend more than $400 billion in financing over the next three years and vowed to work more closely with private and public sector partners to help raise the resources needed to achieving the SDGs,
Speaking today, Sir Suma said the Millennium Development Goals that the SDGS replace had been effective. But their emphasis on social outcomes had failed to mobilise private sector financing. The SDGs are, however, more attractive to the private sector.
The EBRD had already had success in leveraging private sector funding, and particularly so in the area of sustainable energy projects, Sir Suma said.
In infrastructure, he said, more could be done to attract capital, through risk mitigation measures and better project preparation, for example.
It was also very important to develop local currency and capital markets to reduce foreign exchange risks for some borrowers. The EBRD was already responsible for impressive examples of such an approach in Georgia and Armenia, he said.
Other key speakers at the event included: the World Bank’s President, Jim Yong Kim, the deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Min Zhu, and the UN’s Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
The Financing for Development conference is one of three milestone meetings in this crucial year for global development.
This week’s event is taking key decisions on how the international community will raise the financing that will deliver the global development agenda for the next 15 years.
The new SDGs will be adopted at the UN General Assembly in September, while COP21 is due to clinch a binding agreement on addressing climate change in Paris in December.
Before flying to Ethiopia, Sir Suma said: “in this critical year, the international community is setting out an ambitious new development agenda for the coming decades. At stake is the well-being of a fast-growing global population. We cannot fail.”
