Developing countries have shown sincerity to pursue millennium development goals but there is a need for stepped up implementation of commitments made by development partners in areas including assistance, finance, trade and transfer of technology for achievement of the UN-set goals, urged Ambassador Munir Akram while speaking on behalf of G-77 and China on Monday.
Speaking at the Economic and Social Council's high-level meeting with Bretton Wood Institutions (BWI's), World Trade Organisation (WTO) and UN Conference on Trade and Development, Pakistan's Permanent Representative stressed the developing countries face multiple challenges within an increasingly globalise but unequal international economy.
He pointed out that in contrast to the commitments to increase development assistance, the official development assistance (ODA) flows actually declined in 2006. Similar shortfalls and constraints have also been seen in implementing other commitments relating to technology transfer, environment, migration, as well.
He observed the developing countries have demonstrated their sincerity to implement their part of the commitment, which include the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) and other development goals internationally agreed in a series of international conferences and summits held over the last decades.
"Unfortunately our development partners have not demonstrated a similar alacrity in implementing their part of the commitments whether in development assistance and financing, trade, technology transfer and other areas of co-operation".
Ambassador Akram called on the United Nations as well as the IMF, World Bank and the WTO to contribute to the elaboration of such specific benchmarks to facilitate monitoring of implementation of MDG's and the other internationally agreed development goals.
The G-77 and China propose that, as a first step, the UN and other concerned organisations help in preparing a comprehensive matrix of the commitments undertaken under MDGs 8 and other internationally agreed development goals. The G-77 will move a specific proposal to achieve this objective, he disclosed.
Drawing attention to the challenges faced by developing countries, Munir Akram said concessional development financing remains an essential input for the realisation of the MDGs and other national development goals.
Despite the commitments made in 2005, and promise of $50 billion in additional assistance, the level of ODA flows, in fact, declined in 2006, he noted. There is a need for actual and immediate concessional financing, the ambassador emphasised.
Ambassador Akram noted that the development assistance offered "multilaterally and bilaterally" is not responsive to national policies and plans, since it is mostly earmarked to donor-determined sectors and projects. Development financing is often accompanied by conditions and often expended largely on expensive consultants and experts from UN agencies or donor organisations, he lamented.
The level of development financing in many cases the ambassador stated, is less than the outflow of resources from the concerned developing countries. The flow of foreign direct investment is focused mostly on a small number of dynamic "emerging markets", with most developing countries starved of investment finance, he noted.
The need for a reform of the international financial system is evident from the growth, integration and volatility of financial and currency markets. The reform efforts should also address the objectives for which the IMF was created: one, to ensure financial stability, and two, to ensure access to (short-term) financing for those countries which actually need it, he added.
He remarked that the "Aid for Trade" initiative is a good concept; but its size and scope is limited; and its impact, even if adequately enlarged, will not be meaningful for several years at least.
The ambassador noted that outside the trade field, the restraints on access to technology, specially advanced technologies, which could address critical development problems, are now major manifestation of inequality between the developed and the developing countries and called for finding ways to fund R&D on the priority problems of the developing countries."
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