BAPA+40 Side Event: South-South Cooperation for Financing for Development in the Digital Era

Financing based on South-South cooperation initiatives has achieved much progress in recent years: creation of new development finance institutions; consolidation and expansion of existing ones; setting up and strengthening of mechanisms to meet official liquidity needs (BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement; Chiang-Mai) and new investment programs (BRI; NEPAD-IPPF).

In addition, South-South FDI has grown dramatically since the early 2000s. But, while great potential exists, the fact is that actual financing for development is still largely insufficient.

Traditional sources do not seem able to provide the expected finances to help meet global development challenges, for a more inclusive, fairer and sustainable world. In addition, new and emerging South-South financial sources also face constraints in terms of what they can finance and how.

Southern Development Banks remain under-funded for the essential contributions they are asked to provide.

Critical gaps remain in areas such as concessional finance; financing for dealing with shocks, especially natural disasters which are becoming even more frequent and destructive; long-standing essential needs such as water which remain unfinanced, just as new and important areas are emerging such as the digital economy. Moreover, some parts of the world remain extremely under-funded, particularly in Africa. There is now a new urgency to scale up finance and direct it in a sustainable developmental manner.

This round table will offer a platform to share good practices and lessons learned in the Global South by bringing experts to discuss concrete ways on how to harness South-South cooperation to scale-up and better use development finance to develop productive capacities, and foster structural transformation and progress towards attainment of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Panelists

• Amb. Ina Krisnamurthi, Special Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on Economic Diplomacy, Republic of Indonesia

• Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

• Li Yuefen, Special Advisor, Economics and Development Finance, South Centre

• Abdelhakim Elwaer, Advisor on South-South Cooperation for Global Advocacy, IsDB

• Hany Besada, Senior Research Coordinator, UNOSSC

• Ricardo Gottschalk, UNCTAD

Event open to the public.

Lunch will be served at 12.30.