PM says long-term financing needed to achieve SDGs

Prime Minister Mia Mottley has reiterated her call for a restructuring of the international financial architecture, stressing that it is required for developing countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“For us, it is about longer money, cheaper money and being able to use it for the purposes for which we need to reduce all of our inequalities and to achieve the elements of the SDGs,” she declared on Monday.

Mottley was speaking at a panel discussion examining the biggest challenges to achieving the SDGs, and the interventions, partnerships, and strategies that are needed, which is part of the two-day 2023 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, also known as the SDG Summit, convened by President of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, Ambassador Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Barbadian leader lamented that, “regrettably, we value short-term lending but do not understand that if countries are going to invest in education and health care, they need 30- and 40-year money in order to be able to do so”.

“Our situation has been compounded by the [COVID-19] pandemic and therefore that long term money is critical,” she said, adding that developing countries like Barbados need “missionary oriented lending”.

She told the panel that if there is a belief that the SDGs are worth attaining, a framework needs to be put in place that allows the multilateral development banks (MDB) to value the SDGs and increase repayment periods.

“Let us get a meeting with the credit rating agencies in the market …because you cannot continue to value short-term lending. You cannot continue to have a matrix that doesn’t support a move away from per capita GDP (gross domestic product) that is historic and tells us nothing about the country, while the vulnerability of the country increases exponentially,” the Prime Minister said.

Asked whether she was more encouraged now about a reform of the financial systems than three months ago, Mottley replied: “I believe that [World Bank President Ajay Banga] has scored a century in his first 100 days and I say so as one who has been a major critic of the World Bank.

“I think the course correction that he has brought has been critical, but I say to him, if we are running fast and the dog behind us is running faster than us, we will still get bitten. So I hope he recognises now that pace and scope are still the order of the day and in fairness, it is not him, it is us, the countries. He is simply the agent that will be carrying out our wishes, but at the end of the day, I want to make the point that we cannot have SDGs for the benefit of global public goods and not have a mechanism for financing global public goods.”

(CMC/BT)