5 Things You Need to Know About the IMF and the Sustainable Development Goals
IMF Blog, July 26, 2018
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Tony Annett, Chris Lane
- Published: July 26, 2018
Overview
- Authors: Tony Annett, Chris Lane
- Date: July 26, 2018
- Context: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—endorsed by 193 countries in 2015 as a blueprint for policy through 2030—address poverty, hunger, exclusion, conflict, and environmental limits (including climate change driven by burning fossil fuels). The IMF engages with the SDGs where they affect economic stability and sustainable and inclusive growth.
People: Fostering inclusion
- Findings:
- Inclusion is central to the IMF’s mandate and linked to maintaining high levels of employment.
- IMF research shows high levels of income inequality are associated with lower and less durable economic growth and greater financial instability.
- Evidence shows reducing gender gaps boosts economic productivity, growth, and resilience.
- Policy responses and tools:
- IMF policy advice reflects inequality and gender equity when important for economic stability and inclusive growth.
- Fiscal policy can be deployed to reduce inequality through spending on health, education, and social protection and by ensuring the progressivity of tax systems.
- Gender budgeting: focus on designing tax and spending policies to boost women’s economic participation.
Prosperity: Supporting growth, jobs, and poverty reduction
- Findings:
- Boosting growth, especially in low-income countries, is a vital precondition for SDG success.
- Youth unemployment is a major concern given technological disruption and the future of work.
- Policy responses and tools:
- Creating fiscal space for growth-enhancing and poverty-reducing investments in health, education, infrastructure, and agricultural productivity.
- Policies to promote economic diversification.
- Reassessing IMF approach to social spending as a tool for poverty reduction and sustainable growth.
- Example: Social protection is one of the pillars of the Argentinean reform plan supported by the IMF.
Planet: Engaging in climate action
- Findings:
- Tackling climate change requires moving to a zero-carbon energy system over the next three decades (as called for by the Paris Agreement).
- Energy prices should reflect health and environmental costs from carbon emissions and air pollution.
- Policy responses and tools:
- Helping countries price carbon emissions and remove energy subsidies.
- Introducing Climate Change Policy Assessments to help highly-vulnerable countries prepare for climate disruption.
- Examples: Climate Change Policy Assessments for Seychelles and Lucia.
- Stepping up quick disbursing emergency financing to countries hit by severe climatic shocks.
Peace: Strengthening governance and tackling corruption
- Findings:
- Strong institutions and good governance underpin peaceful and inclusive societies and support other SDGs.
- Corruption and weak governance frameworks are associated with significantly lower growth, investment, FDI, and tax revenues.
- Policy responses and tools:
- Rolling out a new IMF framework for more systematic, evenhanded, effective, and candid engagement with member countries on governance.
- Ramping up capacity building and institution strengthening, with a special focus on fragile and conflict-afflicted states.
Partnerships: Financing the SDGs
- Findings:
- Achieving the SDGs will require a significant increase in public spending in many countries; domestic revenue alone will not be sufficient for most developing countries.
- Rising debt levels in low-income countries complicate SDG progress.
- Policy responses and tools:
- Developing a broad framework for assessing spending needs, focusing on country case studies: Benin, Guatemala, Indonesia, Rwanda, and Vietnam.
- Collaboration with country officials, the World Bank, and United Nations agencies on spending needs for health, education, and infrastructure.
- Strengthening tax capacity is critical; stepped-up official aid and private financing options will be needed to fill the financing gap.
Concluding findings
- The SDGs articulate clear objectives for making development more sustainable and inclusive, representing basic requirements for human decency and flourishing for current and future generations.
- Helping countries navigate the SDG policy roadmap is a top priority for the IMF.
Source: IMF blog post "5 Things You Need to Know About the IMF and the Sustainable Development Goals", Tony Annett and Chris Lane, July 26, 2018.
Content in this bundle
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References
- عربي
- Português
- https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/BLOG-1024x600-baby-mother-seals-sdgs-infogram-image.png
- income inequality
- gender gaps
- inequality
- gender equity
- deployed to reduce inequality
- especially in low-income countries
- future of work
- tackle climate change
- Seychelles
- Lucia
- in this area
- new framework
- complicating SDG progress
- IMF Support for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
