ADB, UN suggest strategies towards Millennium Development Goals
The Asia-Pacific region has been praised for leading the world in the drive to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) but will need to address three key areas of implementation, according to the Asian Development Bank and others.
It is essential to extend the benefits of technology to all, mobilise the necessary financial resources, and build statistical systems that can monitor the progress of the poorest groups to ensure that no one is left behind, experts say.
The ADB has called for a shift from an aid-centric approach on development finance to much wider financing where national governments, their development partners, municipalities, businesses, and financial and civil-society groups work together to explore all possible sources of funds.
"Thailand has a very well-developed capital market but still there are opportunities for deepening and strengthening the capital market here for exploring opportunities in different kinds of bond markets across the region and different sources of finance to help develop Thailand," ADB vice president Stephen Groff said.
"This includes thinking about strengthening the municipal bond market and thinking about other kinds of innovative forms of finance that will help meet the objectives of this government in terms of more and better investments in infrastructure and social development over time."
Groff was speaking to The Nation at the launch of the latest MDG progress report, "Making It Happen: Technology, Finance and Statistics for Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific", at the United Nations headquarters in Bangkok yesterday.
Government revenue has remained a very important source of funding for development in the Asia-Pacific region, but enormous potential remains. There are about US$6 trillion (more than Bt200 trillion) worth of private savings and $3.5 trillion worth of pensions and sovereign wealth funds across the region, along with hundreds of billions of dollars in remittances and foreign direct investment pouring in annually.
"Finding ways to intermediate these savings and flows and steer them towards sustainable development is going to be a critical challenge in the coming years," he said.
Shamshad Akhtar, UN under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap), said "nothing will get done" in terms of development "unless we get the statistical data, finance and strategies right".
"First we have to measure what is not measured. Second is to have the baseline there, and third is to make sure that there is comparability in the data," she said.
She noted that technology had provided explosive growth in the production of data, particularly "big data", generated from the use of the Internet, mobile devices and satellite imagery, so countries in the region had to explore new ways of fully utilising these new resources.
"The key is political commitment and will. Without that, wherever we have seen weak political commitment we have seen less [development] progress, and there has to be a national strategy for the development of statistics.
"We also have to spend a lot of time and effort on building national statistical capacity and investment in innovations so that the official statistics producers do not fall behind other producers."
Nicholas Rosellini, deputy regional director for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said countries in this region would benefit from detailed technology assessment and the design of policies and planning to address technology development. Forums for sharing experiences should be considered and special attention should be paid to disseminating technology to poor and excluded groups.
"In Asia and the Pacific, countries could also engage in collaborative research and development projects and build regional databases, while the international community should also reassess agreements related to technology, especially those that have included measures on intellectual-property rights," he said.
"Establishing a technology bank would especially benefit LDCs [less developed countries] because it would allow them to access to patent to [patented] utilities technology and improve scientific research and innovation," he said.
