{"id":23346,"date":"2019-09-24T17:14:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T12:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/?p=23346"},"modified":"2019-11-22T11:48:40","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T06:48:40","slug":"can-developing-countries-pay-sdgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/magazine-archives\/jwtmag2019\/can-developing-countries-pay-sdgs\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can Developing Countries Pay for the SDGs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Made<\/a><\/p>\n

How Can Developing Countries Pay for the SDGs?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Magazine Desk<\/span><\/p>\n

With objectives as far-reaching as ending poverty in all its forms and delivering quality education to all by 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are highly ambitious \u2013 much more ambitious than their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals. Whether the world achieves these goals or not will depend crucially on money \u2013 particularly public finance.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Traditionally, official development assistance (ODA) would play a pivotal role in financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, which encompasses the 17 SDGs. But, at a time when nationalist rhetoric and isolationist policies are gaining traction in some of the world\u2019s biggest traditional donor countries, the ODA will not be sufficient. In fact, foreign aid has remained flat, at best, in the last few years \u2013 and there is no increase in sight. On the contrary, the spectre of global recession \u2013 heightened by US President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war \u2013 makes a reduction in donor governments\u2019 revenues, together with increased domestic demand for public spending, a distinct possibility. None of this bodes well for foreign aid flows.<\/p>\n

This means that, to implement the SDGs, developing countries will need to rely increasingly on their own resources. And, in fact, the 2030 Agenda anticipates this imperative: the first target of SDG17 is to \u201cstrengthen domestic resource mobilization \u2026 to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection.\u201d The question is, how?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Poor fiscal management means that developing countries \u2013 particularly in Africa, home to 27 of the world\u2019s 28 poorest countries \u2013 are often plagued by debt crises and inflation, and many are at the mercy of commodity-price cycles. Tax collection is a major challenge for these economies: the tax revenues low-income countries collect amount to about 10-20% of GDP, on average, compared to about 40% of GDP in high-income countries.<\/p>\n

One major reason for this is that these countries tend to have large informal economies; another is that they invest little in the infrastructure needed to implement personal taxation, relying instead on sales taxes, which are easier to administer but bring in less revenue. Add to that poor management of what is collected, and these countries consistently fail to deliver needed public goods and services, let alone ensure fiscal sustainability.<\/p>\n

The effectiveness of tax collection and the strength of budgetary systems depend crucially on the extent to which political institutions place constraints on executive power. Governments with credible, institutionalized systems of checks and balances tend not only to collect more tax revenues, but also to have more transparent and predictable budgetary processes. A major reason for this is accountability. Giving a single executive virtually unchecked control over a government\u2019s financial resources raises the risk of sudden changes in budgetary priorities, and nurtures the temptation to spend on projects that enrich a few at the expense of the public good. But when political leaders are unable to use state revenues freely \u2013 say, to enrich themselves or their cronies \u2013 they may be more likely to invest in strengthening the government\u2019s fiscal capacity, including its ability to design, implement, and monitor the budget.<\/p>\n

In a well-functioning parliamentary system, for example, the state budget is overseen by a group of elected authorities in a relatively transparent manner. No one person has the power to shape the process in self-serving ways. Instead, leaders are under pressure to respond to the voters\u2019 needs and preferences.<\/p>\n

\"download\"<\/a>In such a context, taxation becomes an informed, consensual transaction between citizens and the state. This bolsters trust in official institutions, in turn boosting revenues and supporting social and political stability.<\/p>\n

Placing institutional constraints on the executive would, over about nine years, lead to a 2.4% increase in the GDP share of both total revenues and income-tax revenues. Such changes would also raise the quality of fiscal planning above the global average.<\/p>\n

These gains could translate into more textbooks in local schools, more vaccines for local health services, and more resources for poverty-reduction programs. In other words, a taxation system constrained by institutions that ensure transparency and accountability could support progress toward achieving the SDGs.<\/p>\n

Of course, the effects will not be instantaneous. Institutional reform is a gradual process, and legal changes do not immediately translate into behavioural ones. But embedding checks and balances into governance \u2013 particularly to limit the executive\u2019s discretionary budgetary authority \u2013 is integral to accomplish the kind of structural transformation developing countries need if they are to create more stable, prosperous futures well beyond 2030<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Can Developing Countries Pay for the SDGs? Magazine Desk With objectives as far-reaching as ending poverty in all its forms and delivering quality education to all by 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are highly ambitious \u2013 much more ambitious than their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals. Whether the world achieves these goals or …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10390,10843,10873],"tags":[574,2419,257,9668,1000,548,1226,4537,10914,258,2302,3790],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23346"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23351,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23346\/revisions\/23351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}