The IMF and the Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of development targets agreed by the international community, which center on halving poverty and improving the welfare of the world's poorest by 2015. The IMF contributes to this effort through its advice, technical assistance, and lending to countries, as well as its role in mobilizing donor support. Together with the World Bank, it assesses progress toward the MDGs through an annual Global Monitoring Report. |
What are the Millennium Development Goals?
In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to eight specific and measurable development goals—now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—to be achieved by 2015. The first seven goals focus on eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; and ensuring environmental sustainability. The eighth goal calls for the creation of a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade, and debt relief. A significant step toward meeting the MDGs was taken in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002, when the international community adopted a two pillar strategy, whereby sustained pursuit of sound policies and good governance by the low-income countries is to be matched by larger and more effective international support.
How does the IMF help countries make progress towards the MDGs?
There are many ways in which the IMF helps poor countries achieve the sustained high levels of growth that establish the basis for poverty reduction—including through policy advice, technical assistance, financial support and debt relief. It also tries to ensure that developed countries' policies are supportive of low-income countries' development efforts, by advocating for increased foreign aid, the opening of markets to developing countries' exports, and the maintenance of a healthy enabling international economic climate.
The pressures to meet the MDGs by 2015 have further focused the IMF's efforts on helping countries assess the macroeconomic consequences of scaling up both their own policy efforts and external financial support. In this context, the IMF encourages countries to develop and analyze alternative frameworks for achieving the MDGs, and to make these underpin their poverty reduction strategies. Typically, one scenario might include a realistic projection that assumes good policy implementation and continued donor support at a level based on current trends and expectations. Another more ambitious projection would take account of absorptive and administrative constraints and try to identify policies to alleviate them so as to put the country on a higher growth path. This can help countries use the MDGs to design their policies, and guide donors in assessing the capacity of a country to absorb increased levels of aid and put it to effective use.
Increasingly, it is recognized that macroeconomic stability and growth depend heavily on structural and institutional factors. Therefore, in contributing to the achievement of the MDGs, the Fund works closely with partner agencies, especially the World Bank, but also other multilateral and bilateral providers of aid and financing.
The Global Monitoring Report—Measuring Progress
The Global Monitoring Report (GMR) is an annual report that aims to assess how the world is doing in implementing the policies and actions needed to achieve the MDGs and related outcomes. It is produced jointly by the World Bank and the IMF, in collaboration with other international partners.
GMR 2008: MDG Prospects - Reasons for Optimism and Concerns
The 2008 Global Monitoring Report, the fifth in the annual series, concludes that thanks to high economic growth in the past five years, the world is on course to achieve the first MDG-halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015. The number of people living on less than $1/day declined by 278 million between 1990 and 2004. The decline in poverty has been the largest in regions with the strongest growth, such as East Asia.
On current trends, however, most human development MDGs are unlikely to be met at the global level. Sub-Saharan Africa and, in some cases, South Asia are likely to fall short most, especially in the areas of child and maternal mortality, access to basic sanitation, and reducing child malnutrition. The HIV prevalence rate has shown some decline in Africa but has risen in some other regions, albeit from much smaller levels than in Africa.
Prospects are better in education. The world is likely to miss the goal of universal primary school completion but will come close. However, sizable shortfalls are likely in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The goal of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education seems attainable by 2015, although Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to fall short. Prospects for achieving gender parity in tertiary education are less promising.
| Accelerating Progress toward the MDGs: A Six-Point Agenda |
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Sustain and broaden the growth momentum
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