ESCWA conducts detailed diagnostics of the financing for development landscape and provides analysis of the different sources of financing available to overcome five financing challenges: financing insolvencies, financing inequalities, fiscal space constraints, funding shortfalls and debt-financing overhangs that continue to impede sustainable development in the Arab region.
Through the use of artificial intelligence, supervised machine learning, evidence-based analytical assessments and interactive dynamic tools, ESCWA supports policymakers in maximizing the efficiency of public spending and facilitates the transition to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-centric budgeting. ESCWA offers tailored financing solutions and dynamic tools to support Arab States in formulating their country-owned financing strategies through an integrated national financing framework (INFF).
To address financing insolvencies, ESCWA targets domestic resource inefficiencies and tax-related illicit financial flows that continue to undermine tax progressivity and efficiency and exacerbate SDG financing gaps. ESCWA is also advancing work on the potential impacts of global tax reforms, considering the challenges arising from excessive tax incentives and the existing inefficiencies in revenue collection. It also provides policy options and recommendations.
ESCWA offers a suite of nationally-tailored dynamic tools to improve funding shortfalls, including ‘SDG costing calculators’ to enhance public financial management and support the transition to SDG-centric budgeting.
ESCWA developed an ‘SDG-Interlinkages Toolkit’ to prioritize and sequence financing interventions to tackle financing inequalities. The analysis offers quantitative assessments of the potential savings that can be accrued by optimizing SDG decisions.
Fiscal space constraints are broached through the development of INFFs that guide countries on how to better plan and finance the SDGs and national sustainable development priorities.
The ESCWA financing framework addresses debt-financing overhangs by providing country-tailored financing simulations while maintaining debt stabilizing trajectories.
IMF Headquarters, Washington, D.C, United States