PRESS BRIEFING ON FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT

press briefing on financing for development

Together with the Swiss-based non-profit organization that organizes the global policy meetings at Davos, the United Nations this morning had formalized a partnership seeking to maximize business contributions to development and the fight against poverty, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press briefing today.

Announcing the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the World Economic Forum and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs this morning were the Head of the United Nations Financing for Development Office, Oscar de Rojas, and Managing Director of the Global Institute for Partnership and Governance of the World Economic Forum, Richard Samans.

Correspondents were told that the initiative is seeking to enlist all stakeholders’ aid in helping the United Nations bring to the fore new or improved policy responses to the main development challenges identified at the 2002 Global Summit on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico.  The year-long project would take advantage of the public/private synergies that had been “a distinguishing characteristic” of that conference.  The project has also been developed in implementation of the decisions of the Assembly, which, at its High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development last October, had mandated the Secretariat to convene multi-stakeholder discussions on key development issues.

Mr. de Rojas said that beginning in June 2004, a series of multi-stakeholder workshops would bring together experts and representatives of private, public and not-for-profit organizations, who would issue recommendations on specific issues identified in Monterrey.  The informal process would address such important problems as the effectiveness of public/private partnerships and means of improving the climate for private investment in developing countries.  He was confident that cooperation with the World Economic Forum would assure productive involvement of the private sector and other stakeholders.

Stressing the importance of the initiative, Mr. Samans said that his organization had about a thousand of the world’s leading companies as its members and had a diverse array of constituencies.  Currently, it was collaborating with DESA, the private sector, academics, the media and governments, as well as labour and religious organizations in what was called an Agenda for Public/Private Cooperation.

The financing for development process, which had been initiated in Monterrey, called for interdisciplinary thinking to tackle problems at an intersection of trade, aid and finance, he continued.  By their very nature, such issues required a joint private/public response.  It was necessary to look for new solutions or bring old ideas to scale.

For the next year to year-and-a-half, the Forum, in partnership with the United Nations, would participate in the efforts to improve and expand existing public/private partnerships in specific areas of development.  In particular, the initiative would attempt to draw lessons from previous experiences, trying to determine what types of partnerships worked best.  Understanding better how multilateral development worked to improve the investment climates in developing countries was also important.  Another area requiring attention was capacity-building in such areas of financial governance as accounting and auditing.

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