Rich countries fail to remit Sh200tr development money to third world nations

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretary General Mukhisa Kituyi delivers a speech during the opening session of the UNCTAD, in Nairobi. (Photo: AFP)

Developed nations failed to remit Sh200 trillion they had promised developing countries in the last decade.

A new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) noted that the failure had impacted heavily on the development agenda of vulnerable states.

The report said developing countries would be better able to finance the Sustainable Development Goals if rich countries were meeting their 2002 target to put 0.7 per cent of gross national income into overseas aid.

The report is the first major effort to measure progress in achieving the new goals.

"The Sustainable Development Goals represent the outcome of long, serious discussions on how we want our world to look in 2030, but this vision needs serious finance," Unctad Secretary General Mukhisa Kituyi said.

The report, Development and Globalisation: Facts and Figures, said if rich countries had consistently met the 0.7 per cent target since 2002, then the developing countries would have been $2 trillion better off.

"The 0.7 per cent target will be a hard sell for many rich governments, but these are a daring, ambitious set of goals, and they require an equally ambitious response," Dr Mukhisa said.

According to the report, the shortfall in the Official Development Assistance (Oda) is a subset of external official aid provided by developed to developing countries.

The need to establish a stable flow of Oda was recognised as far back as the 1960s. The shortfall is also likely to put focus on the commitment of the rich nations to supporting the development agenda.

President Uhuru Kenyatta yesterday said the developing countries no longer need aid but strategic trade partners who can support their economies.

"It is time we start looking at the challenges as opportunities. We do not need aid but partners," Uhuru said during a panel discussion at the trade meeting.

The other organisations are the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.

The UN said by focusing on the Sustainable Development Goals, the report reflects the international focus on the new goals, putting numerical values on roughly a third of the goals' 230 indicators.

It also generated the $2 trillion figure and highlighted some of the challenges in measuring progress on achieving the goals.

Unctad Head of Statistics Steve MacFeely said SDGs have four times the number of indicators as their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals.

But even for the Millennium Development Goals, the global community was able to measure only 70 per cent of the indicators.

"The global community has major gaps in its data and must find ways to use the existing data much better," Mr MacFeely said, adding that this year's report would help to move measurement forward.

"This report is online and interactive and has already thrown out some interesting results," he said.

Only six countries have ever reached this target, which was first proposed by Unctad in 1968, then agreed to by the global community in 1970 and later reconfirmed at the International Conference on Financing for Development that was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002.

Kituyi said the development assistance was mainly targeted at some of the poorest countries.