The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released an online SDG Financing Tool, SDG-FiT. The tool can be used to evaluate countries’ financing needs to achieve the SDGs in a macroeconomically consistent and dynamic way. It helps monitor SDG implementation activities and evaluate additional financing options.

An “interactive scenario builder,” the tool can help stakeholders “advance long-term comprehensive plans, evaluate the impact of policies, and compare financing options.”

The tool supports the IMF SDG Financing Framework, “created to assess the macroeconomic coherence of a country’s SDG development plans and to ensure proposed financing strategies are consistent with existing constraints and best practices.”

The tool focuses on the following five sectors:

  • Health: ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages (SDG 3);
  • Education: ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all (SDG 4);
  • Roads: providing access to a safe, affordable, and sustainable transport system (SDG 9);
  • Electricity: ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (SDG 7); and
  • Water and sanitation: ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

The tool’s capabilities and uses include setting up a baseline scenario, assessing policy scenarios, and trying different assumptions.

An Excel-based  precursor version of the tool was used in IMF’s 2021 paper titled, ‘A Post-Pandemic Assessment of the SDGs.’ IMF researchers applied this earlier version of the tool to five case studies – Rwanda, Nigeria, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Mexico – to gauge the financial resources needed to achieve the SDGs in the five development areas and to assess alternative policy options to meet these needs.

The SDG Financing Tool website includes a detailed guide to support users in building financing strategies for the SDGs by assessing financing needs for the five sectors and evaluating options to close the financing gap. The tool’s creators hope SDG-FiT will facilitate policymakers’ work on considering financing options and policy planning in individual country cases.

The online tool was launched in April 2023. [SDG-FiT]