Article is an extract from Christine Lagarde’s video for the Unlocking Investment and Finance in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs)
Well first of all congratulations and thank you so much to the World Bank for holding this very important seminar. SDGs in action. We had the IMF have done some homework in order to identify and quantify the physical efforts that will be needed and to really sort of figure out how much will be needed so we’ve built a model and we have concentrated on health education and a selected number of infrastructure and we’ve applied that to all forty nine low income countries and we come up with a big number which is half a trillion dollars that will be needed in order to reach the sustainable development goals only those that I have mentioned.
So how will that money be collected we believe that countries themselves can actually achieve a lot and let me just give you for a particular conditions that in all of you should be satisfied for that money to be raised. Number one countries have to focus on sustainable and inclusive growth number two they need some fiscal capacity number three they don’t need to spend so much more but certainly so much better a number four they also need to make sure that they have good and transparent governance because those will be key for the private sector to take an interest and to complement the funding and those will be key as well for aid money to join this effort.
Let me tell you now, what the IMF will actually do the IMF will continue to support countries in each of the areas that have mentioned for instance we have increased our capacity development on strengthening tax systems by forty one percent over three years with large increases also in all support for fragile states.
We’ll also expanding our engagement on governance and corruption issues given the cost that weak governments governance imposes on growth but clearly all the efforts have to be made by all concerned countries themselves international institutions the private sector and certainly all the donors who can also help by reducing the volatility of aid and by ensuring that allocation of aid better reflects receptions SDG needs the bottom line is that achieving these SDGs will require that strong partnership all stakeholders all hands on deck and we will be a strong participant believe me on this note let me wish you a very productive seminar and very good work.