Response and Recovery: Mobilising financial resources for development in the time of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the economic, financial and debt vulnerabilities of low-income and middle-income developing countries (LICs and MICs) and jeopardized the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. As project leaders, with the cooperation of experts from ECLAC, ESCAP and UNECA, we aim to enable such member countries to diagnose their fragilities in the global and regional context and identify and design appropriate policy responses leading toward recovery and return to the development path.
See more details on the project here.
Measuring Illicit Financial Flows
The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires the bridging of a financing gap of trillions of dollars. Domestic resource mobilization can help close this gap, yet requires a combination of increased public revenues and a virtuous profit-investment cycle. Illicit financial flows (IFFs) undermine this virtuous cycle. Moreover, combatting IFFs is a crucial component of global efforts to promote peace, justice and strong institutions, as reflected in target 16.4 of the 2030 agenda. Policy measures to counteract them need to be based on accurate and robust measurement. This project attempts to define and begin the process of measurement of total value of inward and outward illicit flows for all member states, and globally.
Our role in this project is to broaden the conceptual and methodological inputs and dialogue so that the IFFs measures would not default to narrow or restrictive measures but be sufficiently encompassing and valid. For example, IFFs cannot be adequately captured by looking only at illegal flows. In the first instance, legality can be easily changed, and making an activity legal in law does not make it morally acceptable or harmless in terms of its impact on development. In the case of taxation, merely including tax evasion is neither complete nor practical. Moreover, aggressive taxation avoidance – including profit shifting – dramatically reduces domestic resource mobilisation and the ability of developing countries to achieve the SDGs. As such, both tax avoidance and tax evasion flows should be included in IFF measures.
See more details on the project as a whole here
Documents and publications
South-South Integration and the SDGs: Enhancing Structural Transformation in Key Partner Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative
Within the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the economic interactions it entails, this project aims to build capacity in partner countries in the key policy areas of investment, trade, finance, debt, and technology, by indirectly learning from China’s development experience and by directly drawing from China’s existing institutional capabilities.
Our role in this project is to fulfil its objectives as they relate to debt sustainability and debt management, including ensuring that lessons from China’s debt sustainability and management during its structural transformation are well articulated so that other developing countries can evaluate if, and how, this experience may have applicability to them.
Publications
