• DSG blames financial constraints

Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), Amina Mohammed, yesterday, highlighted persistent challenges developing nations, especially in Africa face, and the need for ambitious global financial reforms.

Calling for urgent reforms on international financial system to boost efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, she regretted that only 17 per cent of SDGs targets are on track, pointing to severe financial constraints facing developing countries in Africa.
  
Addressing the preparatory committee for the fourth International Conference on Financing for Development alongside the agency’s Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, Mohammed said most developing countries could not invest in their future as they struggle to meet their immediate needs of paying salaries and meeting debt service.

She also added that international capital was ‘flowing out of developing economies, rather than in’, making the economic outlook for developing countries remain bleak. 
  
Guterres said the conference, which would hold in Spain next year, would provide an opportunity to tackle these challenges head on and open the door for world leaders to adopt ambitious reforms to deliver affordable long-term financing at scale and deliver the SDG stimulus.  

He said it was also an opportunity to reform an outdated international financial system, dysfunctional and unfair and urged maximum political will to act and to rescue the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
  
Mohammed highlighted that the need for reform was evident in 2015, and the shocks since 2020 underlined the urgency of delivering on commitments and for creating an international financial architecture that could overcome global financial divisions.
  
Outlining six key areas for action to rescue the SDGs, she listed tackling the debt and development crisis; enhancing access to long-term, affordable financing; closing gaps in the global financial safety net; establishing a fair and effective international tax system; harnessing international capital markets and responding to calls for global economic governance reform.

“We have the opportunity to forge a more effective and equitable global financial system and to unlock financing at scale for those that need it most,” she said.