Translating Global Development Goals into National Financing Strategies

The present international financial architecture is entrenching development financing paradox. Advanced countries, with limited development financing needs, are awashed with humongous resources while low- and lower middle-income countries (LLMICs), with heavy development needs, have very limited access to resources, and even most of their few resources are invested in advanced countries. The global financial architecture (GFA) has become an instrument of financial divide by drifting resources away from countries that need them most through exclusive global fiscal regime like illicit financial flows. Available opportunities for national financing strategies in LLMICs are blown away by high fiscal risks, poor business environment, and corruption. This financing paradox, enabled by GFA practices and poor economic governance in most developing countries, is making it impossible to translate global development goals into effective national financing strategies. The emerging ‘polycrisis’ and geo-politics are complicating the financing paradox. Promoting effective financing strategies in LLMICs will require coherent cooperation, productive partnership, and collaborative coordination across developing and developed countries, supported by new institutions, new alliances, and new policy instruments.