22 March 2019: The zero draft of the 2019 Forum on Financing for Development (FfD) Follow-up has been circulated to UN Member States for consideration and consultation. The co-facilitators for negotiations on the outcome document, Mariangela Zappia, Permanent Representative of Italy, and Lazarous Kapambwe, Permanent Representative of Zambia, prepared the draft based on views expressed by delegations during the first and second informal consultations, held on 26 February and 8 March 2019.

The 2019 session of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) FfD Forum will convene from 15-18 April, in New York, US.

By the four-page, 29-paragraph draft text, UN Member States would encourage donors to provide a larger share of official development assistance (ODA) for technical assistance and capacity building in revenue mobilization and in preventing and fighting illicit financial flows (IFFs). They would request the Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development (IATF) to present data on international cooperation on asset return, and to devote a specific section of its 2020 report to the use of technological advances in strengthening tax administration, as well as to combat IFFs.

The zero draft welcomes that foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to developing countries increased in 2018 and have remained “resilient,” while expressing concern that African countries, the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and small island developing States (SIDS) received low levels of FDI. It further notes that the global average cost of remittance transfer remained high at around 7% in 2018. The text also invites the IATF, as part of its 2020 report, to assess how different innovative instruments for blended finance can be best tailored to the specific situations in developing countries, with special regard to African countries, LDCs, LLDCs, SIDS, and countries in conflict and post-conflict situations, as well as middle-income countries (MICs).

By the draft outcome document, governments would aim to create incentives for long-term sustainable investing, which could include requiring more “meaningful” disclosure on sustainability issues, clarifying fiduciary duties and asset owner preference, and pricing externalities. They “note with concern” the decline in the concessionality of bilateral ODA, the share of ODA for country programmable aid, and budget support in recent years, as well as the shift in bilateral ODA towards humanitarian expenditure and in-donor refugee spending. While recognizing the “vital contribution” of South-South cooperation in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, “as a complement to, not a substitute for North-South cooperation,” they also call on donors that have not done so to step up efforts to fulfil their ODA commitments. Member States also encourage increased ODA, capacity building and technical support to strengthen national statistical systems.

According to the zero draft, governments would decide that the intergovernmentally agreed conclusions and recommendations of the 2019 FfD Forum will be fed into the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development, taking place under the auspices of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on 26 September 2019.

Consultations resumed on 25 March 2019 to consider the zero draft. [Letter from Co-Facilitators] [Zero Draft]