By Arun Jaitley, Union Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information and Broadcasting
?Strong and inclusive economic growth is necessary for the developing economies to grow, prosper and develop sustainably. Such growth is also necessary for achieving the SDGs as well as the twin goals of the World Bank. With expected growth of only 4.3% for 2015, the outlook for the developing countries has deteriorated. I must, however, add that the countries in my constituency are bucking the trend and are expected to post reasonably strong growth with India likely to grow at around 7.5%, Bangladesh at 6.3%, Sri Lanka at 6.5% and Bhutan at 7%.
The SDGs are ambitious. They would require ambitious financing and implementation plans. The Bank needs to work across all the seventeen goals, especially relating to human development, economic growth, jobs and social protection. I believe that the World Bank Group must demonstrate unstinting support to the 2030 Agenda. While data, climate change and fragility and conflict are important, we should lay greater focus on all development themes in the SDGs and the priorities of the clients. I suggest the WBG may articulate, in an exclusive paper, separate targets for each of the SDGs for its intervention and support. This will enable the Governors to evaluate the WBG performance against these targets.
The MDBs need to play a pro-active role as providers and facilitators of large scale, long term and affordable development finance from private and public sources. Particularly, the World Bank and IFC, will have to significantly increase their level of finance to support the SDGs. The space created for additional lending by ?margins of manoeuvre? and other measures will run its course very soon. However, the demand for development finance continues to be very strong.
While we are looking to mobilize large scale resources to meet the SDGs, there is the additional challenge of mobilizing over 100 billion US dollars per year for climate finance. I would like these resources to be mobilized from new and additional sources and not at the cost of ODA for poverty and shared prosperity goals. The IBRD financing which is non-concessional and does not flow from the donor resources should not get accounted for in 100 billion flow.
I welcome the agreement on the Road map for the Shareholding review. I would expect the dynamic formula to be finalized by Annual Meeting 2016, incorporating elements which help enhance the voice, role and voting share of the developing countries and reflecting their increased share in global GDP and their contribution to building the Bank?s reserves. Given the increase in share of the developing and transitioning countries in the world GDP from 39% in 2008-2010 to 49% 2013-15, shareholding realignment should reflect the same and be completed by 2017.
I wish to say that we have a long way to go and believe that strong collaboration among all the nations will be sine qua non to achieve SDGs ahead of 2030?.
