Beginnings Issue 12.pub - Planning Institute of Jamaica

P a g e 8 I s s u e 12
Develop a global partnership for development.
A Review of The Worlds Progress on MDG 8.
By Adlai Davids & Nadine Brown
goal at a global level as well as in the local context of Jamaica
External Debt Service Payment
MDG 8 is the one goal explicitly linked to the global financial
system and in the most recent (2008) UN Millennium
Development Goals Report, some trends in the achievement of its
six targets were mostly not encouraging. External debt service
payments by developing and heavily indebted countries’ have been
The current global financial and economic crises are
threatening the realization of the MDGs. In an October
statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, stressed
the need for global leadership on the MDGs, so that
wealthier member states do not forget the 2015 targets as
they address the failures of their own economic and
financial systems. In the MDG 2008 Gap Task Force,
the UN chief stated that while there has been a number
of UN inter-agency processes tracking goals one to seven,
it has been somewhat challenging to assess whether the
targets stated under Goal 8 — Develop a Global
Partnership for Development, are being fulfilled. Goal 8
has six broad targets related to:
• ODA;
• Market access;
• Access to affordable essential drugs;
• Special needs of land-locked countries and Small
Island developing States (SIDS); and
• Debt sustainability; and
• Access to new technologies especially ICT.
Five of the targets are discussed in this article provides a
succinct review of the progress towards achieving the
constantly dropping since 1993 (See Figure 1), and a favourable
environment for investment has not yet been established.
Financial resources for foreign direct investment are diminishing
because of the gobal financial crisis, expected investment in these
countries are unlikely to increase. As such, gains in dealing
comprehensively with developing countries’ debt can therefore be
systematically lost.
Figure 1. External Debt Service Payments as a Proportion of
Export revenues, 1990-2006 (Percentage)
Source: MDG Report 2008
Official Development Assistance (ODA)
Total development aid is still below the UN target of 0.7 per cent
for gross national income (GNI) of members of the Development
Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD (See Figure 2). For all
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