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September 4 to 10, 2023.

September 6, 2023

Yellen to attend India G20 summit, focus on economy, climate, Ukraine
David Lawder, Reuters

“Yellen intends to focus at the summit on strengthening the global economy and supporting low- and middle-income countries by advancing efforts on debt restructurings, the evolution of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and building International Monetary Fund trust fund resources, the Treasury said.”

G20 Leaders: The World Is in Crisis. We Need You to Act on Poverty, Hunger, and the Climate Emergency.
Global Citizen

“MDBs play a crucial role in achieving the UN Global Goals (or Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs), ending poverty, and tackling climate change. The G20’s own Independent Expert Group in 2023 emphasized their importance and the need to right size them with a triple agenda, including tripling MDB financing.”

Multilateral banks are in ferment. Transform them

NK Singh, The Hindustan Times

“As the world battles myriad challenges, transformative, and not incremental changes are needed for multilateral development banks. The time to act is now.”

Reform the Global Finance System to Fund the Sustainable Development Goals

Guillaume Lafortune, Common Dreams

“Second, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) should operate at a much higher scale. Thanks to their governance system, MDBs—including the World Bank and regional development banks—can borrow and lend to their member countries at lower interest rates. When MDBs borrow on international markets, they offer more guarantees to lenders than individual countries because the loans are guaranteed by all their members. Yet, MDBs operate at a scale which is largely insufficient.”

Why the Inter-American Development Bank-World Bank deal matters, and what’s next
Jason Marczak and Pepe Zhang, Atlantic Council

“Amid ongoing geopolitical fragmentation and development challenges, empowering the collaboration between multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and the IDB is a hopeful sign of what is possible. It shows how longstanding institutions can begin to modernize to catalyze their own future effectiveness and broader global prosperity. The next challenge, as always, is to transform the ambition into reality.”

Opinion: A blueprint for the next decade of development finance

Ilan Goldfajn and Rémy Rioux, Devex

“Governments worldwide are seeking financing to meet development goals. Institutions like ours must help by providing more climate financing and increasingly innovative financial instruments. As government officials and other partners gather for the 4th edition of the Finance in Common Summit, which will be hosted in Cartagena, Latin America, for the first time, we think three areas are especially promising for advancing this agenda.”

Easing the burden: Reforms to multilateral lenders and money for developing countries on G20 agenda

UNCTAD

“In early September, leaders from the world’s wealthiest countries meet in India for the G20 summit. With inflation and borrowing costs running high, debt and development are high on the agenda. Multilateral development banks provide vital funding to countries in need. But critics say financial conditions imposed by the lenders can keep debt burdens heavy and cut into spending on development. Should these multilateral lenders be reformed? Is there enough money and urgency to help countries drowning in debt? Tune in to UNCTAD’s Penelope Hawkins to find out how multilateral banks can make funding more available and more sustainable.”

How can development finance institutions drive mobilisation?
British International Investment

“At British International Investment, we’re working to sharpen our approach to mobilisation.  In Understanding Mobilisation, our first paper on the topic which was published earlier this year, we suggested a critical step towards more successful mobilisation by DFIs is to understand it better. In particular we argued there are many more capital events that can lead to mobilisation than those traditionally captured in the measurement of mobilisation. In our new paper, Driving Mobilisation, we dive deeper into two practical strategies that DFIs might adopt in pursuit of higher quality and greater levels of mobilisation. Both draw from commercial banking practises.”

Re-thinking and Revitalizing SDG Financing
Damien Barchiche, Ivonne Lobos, Niels Keijzer, George Marbuah, and Elise Dufief, IISD

“Delays in implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and 2030 Agenda increasingly appear to come partly from unmet financing needs as well as the inability and unwillingness of the G20 to move away from fossil fuel subsidies. The current state of play reflects the international financial architecture’s failure to channel resources to the world’s most vulnerable economies at the necessary scale and speed. A study by IDOS, IDDRI, and SEI finds effective SDG financing is possible when four main conditions are met.”

India’s G20 Leadership: Elevating Capacity Building for Sustainable Development Financing

Mannat Jaspal, ORF

“India’s G20 Presidency has identified the mandate for the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) as thus: “capacity building of the ecosystem for financing sustainable development.” The aim is to scale up efforts in mobilising large pools of global capital for sustainable projects, particularly in emerging and developing economies. Under the aegis of the Sustainable Finance Working Group (SFWG), the G20 proposes the development of the first Technical Assistance Action Plan (TAAP) that will create an ecosystem of capacity-building initiatives encompassing a series of advisory, operational, and technical programs. While the TAAP succeeds in proposing actionable recommendations for capacity-building providers, it does not incorporate a delivery mechanism nor an outcome-based approach to realise these priorities and ambitions. This paper recommends a deliverable-oriented framework for capacity building as identified by the SFWG under India’s G20 presidency.”

Devex Invested: Can development banks find common ground in Colombia?

Adva Saldinger, Devex

“The goal of next week’s summit is to get these institutions better educated and aligned with the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. This year there will be a close look at small and medium-sized enterprises and financial inclusion, climate and biodiversity, sustainable infrastructure, strengthening national public development banks, and more. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro is expected to make an appearance, as are the leaders of EIB and the Inter-American Development Bank.