DFI has won an AfDB competitive bid to support DRC to reform its debt management laws and design a national debt strategy. The project is expected to be completed during 2015-16.  

In the CSO seminars’ programme during the BWI Spring Meetings, DFI proposed a motion that “The World Needs a Sovereign Debt Bankruptcy Procedure”, in an Oxford-style debate organised by New Rules for Global Finance, and won the motion by 80-20% and by convincing 20% of the audience to change their positions to favour the motion. A video of the debate is available on the New Rules website.  

DFI/OIF supported OIF IDA borrowing Ministers of Finance to contribute to a discussion with the G20 Development Working Group on Financing for Development. Ministers focussed on debt problems for SIDS, the need to reduce the cost of remittances, and especially on the need for G20 Finance Ministers to take political decisions to reform global tax laws and stop insisting on tax exemptions for their companies and their ODA, in order to allow developing countries to get their fair share of global tax revenues.  

The new 2015 Government Spending Watch report (“Financing the Sustainable Development Goals: Lessons from Government Spending on the MDGs”) is launched April 13th. The report uses new and unique data-sets from 67 countries on MDG spending over 2012-14 period, new data-sets on debt and defence spending, combined with in-depth analysis of the latest financing trends in developing countries, to draw lessons and implications for the FfD agenda of the SDGs.

It finds that government spending is falling one third short of MDG needs. While the SDGs will require at least US$1.5 trillion extra in public financing annually – meaning a total of US$22.5 trillion in additional finance will need to be mobilised over the lifetime of the SDGs.

The report recommends that this US$1.5 trillion can be financing through a three-pronged approach:

An evening reception launched the ODI report on Financing the Future, advocating mobilisation of public finance for the SDGs, especially for low- and lower-middle income countries and social protection. Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima and Ulrika Modéer Swedish Secretary of State for International Development Cooperation made remarks supporting the report’s conclusions.  

DFI Director Matthew Martin participated as a resource person in several Financing for Development related events in a UN Development Cooperation Forum symposium in Incheon, Korea. He presented the case for closer monitoring of how private sector and blended private-public financing will contribute to reaching the SDGs, discussed lessons from DCF mutual accountability surveys for future assessment of MA, and presented a DCF policy briefing on which modalities of development cooperation can best reach the SDGs.  

The UN Development Cooperation Forum has commissioned DFI to prepare two policy briefs on effectiveness and impact standards for private and blended (joint public and private) development cooperation. The first brief, due in June, will define the potential content of such standards and will be presented at a side event at the Addis Ababa Financing for Development conference. The second, in August, will define how the standards might be monitored, and will be discussed at the DCF symposium in Uganda on 4-6 November 2015.

DFI has been commissioned by the UK Department for International Development to prepare a position paper on debt policy in the context of preparing the Financing for Development conference. It has also been asked to provide inputs on the 2016 review of the BWI Debt Sustainability Framework. 

A joint World Bank, DFI and MEFMI mission visited Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to conduct a DeMPA assessment of debt management. The mission met with officials from various Ministries and Central Bank and prepared a report that will be submitted for peer review and then to the Tanzanian authorities for comments. It is anticipated that the final report be completed by June/July 2015. 

DFI helped convene an international conference in Accra, Ghana, looking at how development finance can meet the challenges of the new era given its changing nature and the proliferation of new sources. Opened by H.E. Seth Terkper, Ghana’s Minister of Finance, and organised by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and a coalition of global partners, the event aimed at updating participants on key debates and policy processes related to financing the SDGs, providing an overview of recent and likely future trends in the purpose, use and impact of international public finance, and at providing alternative perspectives on international public finance and its use.