Greater Support Needed for Developing Countries to Attain MDGs
22 September 2005
Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in Barbados have called for support for developing countries to build and implement national development strategies that are in line with, and bold enough to, achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
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| Commonwealth Finance Ministers met in Barbados on 18-20 September 2005. View larger photo |
In a Communiqué released on 20 September 2005, the Ministers said the development plans should scale up public investments, build capacity, mobilise domestic resources and official development assistance, and provide a framework for strengthening governance, promoting human rights and gender equality, engaging civil society, and promoting the private sector.
The Finance Ministers expressed serious concern at the lack of progress in the Doha Round and stressed the need for high-level political impetus to achieve a major breakthrough at the Hong Kong World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in December 2005. They said the meeting would need to reach agreement on negotiating modalities for agricultural and manufactured products, and to make concrete progress on negotiations on services, rules, trade facilitation and on the development dimension of the Round. The Ministers recognised the need for further efforts to strengthen the capacity to trade of developing countries to enable them to take advantage of the opportunities offered by a successful Round.
The Ministers welcomed pledges by developed countries for increased volumes of aid and stressed on the need for these to be translated into sustained and predictable commitments and disbursements. They also urged developed countries to continue to take concrete steps towards reaching the internationally agreed goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national income in official development assistance. They pointed out the importance in the swift implementation by all countries of the pledges in the G8 Africa Action Plan, including a doubling of aid to Africa, while recipient countries must act to intensify reforms and domestic policies to strengthen growth and achieve the MDGs.
The Finance Ministers welcomed the conclusions of the 8th HIPC Ministerial Forum and stressed the need for the Commonwealth to exercise maximum leverage to achieve closure at the Washington Meetings, on implementing the G8 proposals for cancellation of the International Monetary Fund, International Development Association and African Development Fund debt. They called for full and immediate action to implement these proposals while protecting the financial integrity of the multilateral institutions and without diverting aid flows from elsewhere. They urged the international community to give urgent attention to relieving the debt burden of other poor countries excluded from the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) process, as well as small and vulnerable countries facing growing debt burdens.
CNIS - Commonwealth News and Information Service Issue 253, 21 September 2005
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