The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are almost certain to be missed by the 2015 target date ? barring an unprecedented doubling of aid flows from rich to poor countries. This was the grave conclusion of yesterday's Development Committee meeting, which concluded that the only practical way to salvage a now moribund initiative is to adopt radical measures for financing development.
"We are concerned that, at present, the financing requirements are inadequate," said Trevor Manuel, South African finance minister and chair of the meeting. The main issue the Committee agreed upon is the need for additional resources, said Manuel. "It's not just about the re-application of what's available," he said.
At the current rate of progress, the goals on child poverty, education for primary school children and on cutting maternal mortality will all be missed. UK Chancellor Gordon Brown put it more bluntly, in a startling admission earlier yesterday, when he said that at the current rate the goals "would not be met for 150 years."
Yet even with mounting doubts over their viability, Manuel told Emerging Markets that he believes revising the MDGs is not the answer. "I do not believe that we ought to be thinking about shifting the goal posts. What is required is a concerted effort on the part of all partners of the development compact to make sure that we make steady progress," he said. "We are duty-bound to ensure the MDGs are delivered on," he added.
Various proposals to ramp up the amount of financing for development were aired yesterday, most notably the International Finance Facility (IFF) proposed by Brown, although consensus on their applicability is lacking.
Brown's proposal seeks to fund the development goals by getting aid donors to front-load their commitments - for a total of $50 billion - so that these can be used as security for borrowing on the international capital markets by the new facility. Another recent proposal, to levy a tax on international transactions, made at the UN General Assembly last month by French President Chirac and Brazilian President Lula da Silva, was also discussed.
But IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato stressed that implementation of any proposal is ultimately the prerogative of governments, not international institutions: "We are very willing to look into the technical aspects," he said, but "without a political decision, the technical aspects are useless."
The Committee made its most forceful call in urging donors "who have not yet done so, to make concrete efforts to target 0.7% of their GDP to official development assistance." This was thinly veiled criticism of countries, such as the US, which have yet to come close to that target. US development aid stands at just 0.2% of national income.
However US Treasury Secretary John Snow said yesterday that "the United States has already followed through on the promise we made at Monterrey to substantially increase aid to those taking needed steps to promote lasting, inclusive development progress."
G24 ministers yesterday echoed their "serious concern" that most of the goals will not be met.