List of Participants  | Photos | DeFiNe members

 

Objectives

• To contribute to the OECD Strategy on Development;
• To identify the remaining challenges and opportunities of development financing, with a special focus on least developed countries.

 

Background

• The OECD Development Centre celebrates this year its 50 anniversary. To commemorate this special occasion, the Centre brought together a broad range of speakers from academia, partner institutions and OECD and non-OECD governments, offering analysis and reflections on key development issues that shaped the direction of the Centre in the years to come. A week of meetings kicked off on 27 February and culminated with the first ever High Level Meeting of the Centre’s Governing Board on 1 March.
• The DeFiNe annual meeting took place on the eve of the OECD Global Forum on Development (28-29 February 2012), which gathered a broad range of stakeholders (governments, international organisations as well as NGOs and civil society) from both developing and OECD countries to facilitate knowledge sharing regarding development challenges.
  During the DeFiNe workshop on “Public Expenditures & Infrastructure Financing”, which took place in October 2010, members were invited to help determine the content of the upcoming Forum.
• An OECD Stragety of Development was called for by OECD Ministers in May 2011 and will be submitted to Ministers for approval later in 2012. The goal of the Strategy is to enhance the OECD contribution to sustainable economic development worldwide, by leveraging on and sharing its knowledge base and policy networks and ensuring that the policies pursued by its Members are coherent with the goal of promoting development.
• The DeFiNe annual meeting was also an opportunity to provide guidance on the OECD Development Centre’s on-going work on estimating the cost of meeting the MDG, which is gratefully supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

Agenda

 

Session 1: Shaping the Future OECD Strategy on Development

The OECD is currently preparing a new Strategy on Development focusing in particular on four areas:
(1) innovative and sustainable sources of growth;
(2) mobilising resources for development;
(3) governance for development; and
(4) measuring progress for development.

During this session, participants were invited to express their views and thoughts about the priorities of the OECD’s future work on development.

 

Chair: Konstantina Birmpili, Ambassador, Permanent Representation of Greece to the OECD

 

Presentation of the OECD Development Strategy - Mario Pezzini, Director, OECD Development Centre

 

Panellists:
* Deb Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Bangladesh
* Marcio Pochmann, President, Institute for Applied Economic Research, Brasil
* Jorge Maia, Head of Research, Industrial Development Corporation, South Africa
* Sebastián Rovira, Economic Affairs Officer, Division of Production, Productivity and Management, ECLAC-United Nations, Chile

 

Open Discussion

 

Session 2: Financing Development: where do we stand? What Specific Challenges for the LDCs?

Financing development, and the achievement of the MDGs in particular, remains a daunting challenge. The current economic situation may amplify financing gaps.

This session addressed the following issues:
(1) What is the effective cost of reaching the MDGs by 2015? What are the gaps? What resources could be mobilised?
(2) How could the evolving landscape of development finance respond to these challenges?
(3) How can governments in developing countries improve the effectiveness of domestic resource mobilisation and public spending?

Background document: Issue Paper on "Financing the MDGs - How much? Who Pays?"

 

Chair: Tony Tujan, Director, IBON International, Philippines

 

Financing the MDGs: How much does it cost? Who pays? 

Jean-Philippe Stijns, Economist, OECD Development Centre

Effectively allocating public budget toward social spending in SSA

Augustin Fosu, Deputy Director, United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU‐WIDER) and Visiting Fellow, Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Ghana

PPPs in the health sector: the risks and opportunities for DCs and LDCs

Lichia Saner-Yiu and Raymond Saner, Centre for Socio-Eco-Nomic Development (CSEND), Switzerland | Presentation on PPPs in the health sector in DCs

 

Panellists:
* Jean-François Brun, Foundation for International Development Study and Research (FERDI/ CERDI), France
* Nora Lustig, Non-Resident Fellow, Centre for Global Development (CGD), United States | Poverty, Inequality and the Millennium Development Goals in Latin America
* Sarah Ssewanyana, Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), Uganda

 

Open discussion

 

Cocktail: Presentation of the LDC-IV Monitor Project

* Mario Pezzini, Director, OECD Development Centre
* Kadri Ecvet Tezcan, Ambassador of Turkey to the OECD
* Gyan Chandra Acharya, Ambassador of Nepal to the UN
* Miguel Rodriguez Mendoza, Senior Associate, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
* Donata Garassi, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate

 

 

Background documents:

> "Securing the Outcome of the UN LDC IV: The Need for an Independent Monitoring Mechanism" by Debapriya Bhattacharya and Syed Saifuddin Hossain, published by ICTSD in August 2011.

> "Least Developed Countries in the Next Decade - What is there in the Istanbul Programme of Action?"
by Debapriya Bhattacharya and Syed Saifuddin Hossain, published by FES in November 2011.