Integrate Sustainable Development Goals into budgets – UNDP representative

JAMAICA IS being urged to effectively use its state budget to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into national and local budgeting and budget reporting to ensure that all government expenditure is understood and accounted for as contributing to the SDGs.

United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative, Bruno Pouezat, made the proposal during the United Nations high-level political forum (HLPF) in New York, United States recently, where Jamaica and a number of other countries presented their voluntary national review (VNR) reports of progress towards the SDGs.

“The objective must be for all resources available nationally to target explicitly the national development priorities,” he stated.

Pouezat said these SDG-aligned budgets and budgetary reports should also tie foreign and domestic private-sector investments to the goals, where applicable.

Quoting from a UN Development Coordination Office report, he noted, as an example, that foreign investments amounted to 5.6 per cent of GDP in 2016, and remittances alone amounted to 17 per cent of GDP.

He pointed out that on the other hand, with less than 0.2 per cent of Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP) sourced from official development assistance (ODA), it cannot be relied on as a reliable indicator of progress towards achievement of the SDGs.

“At less than 0.2 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP, ODA represents less than one per cent of the state budget,” he noted.

Aligning budgets and budgetary reporting to the SDGs was necessary to consummate a whole-of-government approach to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, Pouezat concluded.

STILL FACED WITH SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGES

Minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Pearnel Charles Jnr., in his contribution to the VNR event in New York, reported that 67.2 per cent of the national outcome indicators and targets for Vision 2030 Jamaica have shown improvement over the baseline year, 2007. He said challenges remained:

“As a small island developing state, however, we are still faced with significant challenges, given our economic, environmental and social vulnerabilities, narrow natural resource base and limited institutional capacity. Additionally, we are frequently and adversely impacted by extreme weather events, which severely retard our development prospects.”

Charles said Jamaica’s designation as an upper-middle-income country presents a challenge for access to certain types of aid and concessionary financing but that through engagement with the Group of Friends for SDGs Financing, Jamaica had been seeking to mobilise institutional capital from the private sector for various priority projects.

“Strategic resource mobilisation is, therefore, required towards the identification of new, non-traditional and innovative financing modalities,” he observed.

CONTRIBUTED UN Resident Coordinator to Jamaica, Bruno Pouezat surrounded by Team Jamaica at United Nations Headquarters last week during the high level political forum on the Sustainable Development Goals where Jamaican submitted its Voluntary National Report. From left: Nicola Barker Murphy, Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Jamaica to the UN; Deidre Mills, Jamaica’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN; Dr Arlene Bailey, senior research fellow and Associate Dean, SALISES, UWI, Mona; Toni-Shae Freckleton, director, population, PIOJ; and Prof Aldrie Henry-Lee, university director for SALISES, UWI, Mona.