WITH the revenue kitty of most developed
countries being under strain, the UN has called for greater
participation by the private sector players to contribute to the
official development assistance kitty.
Addressing
participants at the opening of the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development,
President of the General Assembly, John Ashe urged the international community
to accelerate efforts to mobilize financial resources towards achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline and towards paving
the way for a post-2015 development agenda.
"Financing for development is the elixir - the lifeblood, if you like - that
we need," Mr. Ashe told Member States and representatives of institutions,
civil society and the business sector.
The overall theme of this, the sixth high-level dialogue on the issue, is
"The Monterrey Consensus, Doha Declaration on Financing for Development and
related outcomes of major UN conferences and summits: status of implementation
and tasks ahead."
The Monterrey Consensus, adopted in that Mexican city in 2002, is a landmark
partnership agreement for global development. It covered a number of topics,
including domestic resource mobilization, foreign direct investment (FDI),
trade, official development assistance (ODA), debt relief and systemic issues.
It was followed in 2008 by the Doha Declaration, which emphasized, among other
things, the need to urgently meet the agreed ODA target of 0.7 per cent of
donor countries' gross national income (GNI), and underscored the importance
of strengthening the World Trade Organization (WTO) with special and differential
treatment for developing countries.
The current ODA is around 0.31 per cent of national income of developed countries,
according to UN figures.
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