The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) needs to address the issue of tax expenditures. These preferential tax treatments cause huge immediate public revenue losses while their effectiveness is often in doubt. Governments worldwide use preferential tax treatments – called tax expenditures – to pursue different policy objectives, such as attracting investments, promoting…
The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), scheduled for June 30 to July 3 in Seville, Spain, will conclude an extensive United Nations process that aims to align public and private financial flows with social, environmental, and economic goals. …
In the face of multiple crises, the availability of development finance for developing countries is declining, even as their financing needs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals are increasing. The Pact for the Future has recently called for eligible countries to channel half of their 2021 allocations of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) at the International…
The World Bank’s current reform efforts are approaching a critical point during the Annual Meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, from October 9 to 15, 2023. The Bank should use this moment to adopt meaningful changes that enable it to tackle the twin challenges of global development and climate change and reflect voices of stakeholders from around…
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In September, the UN General Assembly’s High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development met to discuss how to fund the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – four years after the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was set. The world community already acknowledged the role of non-traditional funding, namely South-South cooperation and triangular cooperation in Busan in 2011. With the new ambitious 2030 Agenda, funding became ever more crucial. The UN estimates that the funding gap for achieving the SDGs amounts to 2.5 trillion USD every year. The 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda therefore called not only for increasing Official Development Assistance (ODA) but also for mobilizing other public and private resources that go beyond ODA. To build a picture of the total funds channeled for development assistance, in 2014, the OECD started developing a new international measurement framework to cover a more comprehensive range of development finance, the “Total Official Support for Sustainable Development” (TOSSD) measure. TOSSD is due to be finalized next year. Now is the time to make sure that TOSSD can fulfil its potential to provide a more complete picture of development finance from all contributors not only from the Global North but also from the Global South.…
