Press Briefing: Global Monitoring Report 2008

MS. TUCK:  Hello.  Welcome to the press conference to launch the Global Monitoring Report 2008 - MDGs and the Environment:  Agenda for Inclusive and Sustainable Development.

I am Merrell Tuck.  I am a Senior Communications officer in the Development Economics Vice Presidency of the World Bank, and I'll be moderating today.

This is a joint report of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and it is embargoed until 12:30 local time or 1630 GMT.  And the report is available at the Press Desk upstairs, so I would encourage everyone to get it if you haven't already gotten a copy of it.

I also want to mention that our IMF colleagues have requested that journalists treat Table 1.1, on page 26, which is a "Summary of World Output" as embargoed until 9 a.m. Wednesday, or 1300 GMT.  That is because this Table 1.1 is taken from the World Economic Outlook, which is being launched tomorrow.

One other housekeeping point.  I think you are all already aware that Spanish and French are available; if you need it, just grab a headset at the back.

Let me now introduce the presenters.

To my left is Mr. Alan Gelb, Acting Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.  He is going to provide, quickly, some context regarding the aim of the GMR.

Then, he will hand it over to Mr. Zia Qureshi, who is lead author of the GMR and a Senior Advisor in DEC, who will present the report's main findings and messages.

He will be followed by Mr. Mark Plant, who is Deputy Director in the IMF's Policy Development and Review Department, and he will speak about the macroeconomic aspects of the development agenda.

Some of today's written remarks will be available after the press conference, just outside the room, and in addition we will have a transcript.

Without further ado, let me turn it over to Alan.

Thank you.       

MR. GELB:  Thanks very much, Merrell.

Good morning.  I am pleased to introduce the "Global Monitoring Report 2008 on MDGs and the Environment: An Agenda for Inclusive and Sustainable Development."

As in previous years, you know the Global Monitoring Report is a joint report.  It is prepared jointly by the Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the report has benefited from inputs from a range of institutions, including the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the EBRD, the Inter-American Development Bank, OECD, the UN, and the WTO, so quite a number of institutions have contributed in various ways to the report, and we thank them.

Each year, the GMR takes stock of where we are in implementing the Millennium Development Goals, and as most of you know, there are eight globally-agreed Millennium Development Goals, the first one being the goal of halving absolute poverty by 2015.

The GMR lays out a backdrop and context to the Development Committee discussions during the Spring Meetings, and the report is a topic item on the agenda this year.

Environmental sustainability and climate change in particular is the special theme of this Global Monitoring Report.

In terms of the two parts of the report--the MDG monitoring and the special focus on climate change--this year marks the halfway point from 2000 to 2015 in the efforts to achieve the MDGs. So this is a special year, a year to make progress in this area, and it is also a very important year for the climate change agenda following on from the foundations laid at the conference in Bali in December 2007.

So this report is focusing on issues that are very much at the forefront of the development discussions this year.  Climate change and the MDGs and environmental sustainability are going to be the subjects of a number of high-level meetings that are planned during the year, leading off from our own Spring Meetings, G-8 and ECOSOC meetings in July, a High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra in September, a UN event on the MDGs in September, and a Financing for Development Conference in Doha in December.  So there is going to be a lot of continual emphasis on these areas, and the report is both monitoring achievement of goals but also policies, and it proposes a policy agenda to expedite progress toward the Millennium Development Goals and to ensure their sustainability.

Before turning it over to Zia and Mark, I just want to take the opportunity to commend the Global Monitoring Report team for their work.  This is a difficult report to write.  It is done in a very condensed period of time.  Some of the co-authors are with us today and also available to answer any specialized questions that you may have on their areas.

I think this is really a good example of where we at the Bank and the IMF collaborate together to produce really quite an important product for the development community.

Let me stop there and thank you very much and hand over to Zia.

MR. QURESHI:  Thank you.

Alan has provided the context for this year's report, so I'll go straight to the report's main messages and main findings.

The report's central message is this--as Alan said, it deals with the MDGs and the special theme of environmental sustainability and climate change.  Its central message is that urgent action is needed to help the world get back on track to meet the MDGs, and urgent action is also needed to combat climate change that threatens the well-being of all countries but particularly of poor countries and poor people.

The goals of development and environmental sustainability are closely related, and the paths to those goals have many synergies.

At the MDG midpoint, where are we?  Assessment at midpoint shows significant progress on some MDGs but major shortfalls on most of the Goals.  The first MDG calls for reducing extreme poverty and hunger by half.  The poverty goal is likely to be met at the global level, thanks to a remarkable surge in many countries over the past decade but especially in countries with large populations, notably China and India.

However, there are serious shortfalls in fighting hunger and malnutrition, sometimes referred to as "the forgotten MDG."  The recent rise in food prices has brought increased attention to these issues, but more is needed.

The goal of gender parity at school seems attainable at the global level, but there is less progress on gender parity in tertiary education and other gender-related targets.

On current trends, likely shortfalls are especially serious for the human development MDGs.  Prospects are gravest in health for the goals of reducing child and maternal mortality, but significant shortfalls are also likely in the primary school completion and sanitation MDGs.

Within this overall picture, there is considerable variation across Regions and countries.  At the regional level, Sub-Saharan Africa lags seriously on all MDGs, including MDG 1 for poverty reduction, although many countries in the Region have recently improved their growth performance.

South Asia lags seriously on most human development MDGs, although it will likely meet the poverty reduction goal.

At the country level on current trends, a majority of countries will fall short of most MDGs.  Fragile and conflict-affected states are falling behind most seriously.  On some goals, instead of progress, there is regress.  For example, in aggregate, extreme poverty arose in countries in fragile situations over the past 15 years. 

It is this overall picture that led a group of world leaders meeting in Davos in January of this year to declare what they termed a "development emergency" and issue an MDG Call to Action.

Behind the cold statistics on the MDGs that I just mentioned are, of course, real people, and lack of progress has immediate and tragic consequences.  Every week in the developing world, close to 200,000 children die of disease before they reach the age of 5.  Every week, 10,000 women die from treatable complications of pregnancy and birth.  Malaria, a preventable disease, kills one million people a year, tuberculosis 2 million, and AIDS 3 million.

To be sure, there has been progress.  At the MDG halfway point, 3 million more children under the age of 5 survive every year, but 10 million still don't.  About 40 million more children of primary school age are at school, but 75 million still are not.

What are the implications of this assessment for the agenda ahead?  The report's message is that despite the shortfalls to date, most MDGs remain achievable for most countries if stronger efforts are made both by the countries themselves and their development partners.  This is indeed a huge challenge, but the success of better-performing countries inspires and gives reasons for hope that rapid progress is achievable such as Vietnam's achievement in reducing extreme poverty from around 58 percent of the population in 1993 to 16 percent in 2006.

In Africa as well, countries such as Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda are demonstrating that it is possible to achieve strong growth and tangible reductions in poverty in Africa.

Rwanda and now Liberia are showing the way from conflict to economic recovery.

These successes need to be multiplied and the progress quickened and broadened across the different MDGs and across countries.  With the world already at the halfway point, quick actions are needed by the countries and by their development partners.

International attention associated with the MDG midpoint makes 2008 a crucial year to generate the necessary momentum toward the MDGs to make it truly a "Year of Action for the MDGs," as it has been termed by the international community, transforming the midpoint into a turning point for the Development Goals.

The planned high-level international meetings during the year provide an opportunity that must be seized to agree on priorities for action and milestones for monitoring progress.

To expedite progress toward the MDGs, to make it more inclusive, and to ensure the sustainability of that progress by integrating development and environment concerns, the report proposes a six-point agenda for inclusive and sustainable development, as summarized in this slide, and I will say a few words on each of those six points.

The first point of the agenda is that strong and inclusive economic growth must be at the center of the strategy to achieve the MDGs, including especially concerted efforts to spur growth in lagging countries in Africa and elsewhere and in fragile and conflict-affected states.

Poor countries need to achieve annual GDP growth of 7 percent or more to make serious dents in poverty.  While growth in Africa has improved, only about one-third of the Region's population lives in countries that have achieved average GDP growth in this range in the past decade.

While specific policy priorities for growth vary from country to country, looking across countries, three areas emerge as essential to robust growth:  1) sound macroeconomic policies, 2) a conducive private investment climate, including access to key infrastructure, and 3) good governance.

In fragile states, improvement of the governance environment together with security enhancement is crucial.  In many countries in Africa and in low-income countries more generally, a dynamic agricultural sector is key to achieving strong and inclusive growth and will help to mitigate the current upward pressures on food prices.  An African green revolution would provide a strong foundation for growth and poverty reduction in the Region.

An immediate priority is to protect developing country growth from the risks arising from the turmoil in global financial markets and the rise in energy and food prices.

The second point of the agenda is that we must pick up the pace on human development goals, where the prospective shortfalls are the most serious.  This will require commitment of more resources, including increased donor support, to key programs in education and health, especially the Education for All Fast-Track Initiative, health systems strengthening, and eradication of malaria.

But more spending on education and health programs alone is not the answer.  The quality and equity of spending are equally if not more important.  A stronger focus is needed on tackling malnutrition, a challenge made more urgent by the rise in food prices, and policy interventions must factor in the strong links that exist between health and education outcomes, nutrition, and environmental factors, including water and sanitation, pollution, and climate change.  Based on analysis of a range of countries, the report finds that environmental health hazards can cost countries as much as 1.5 to 4.0 percent of GDP annually.

The third point of the agenda is that environmental sustainability must be integrated into core development work, maximizing synergies.  MDG 7 underscores the strong links between development and environmental sustainability.

Ensuring environmental sustainability is necessary for achieving the other MDGs and sustaining long-term growth and development.  For natural resource-dependent countries, sound resource management is critical for sustainable growth.  Twenty-four developing countries are now participating in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, of which 17 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Developing countries will suffer the most from climate change and are the least able to adapt.  For example, during the 1990s, around 200 million people per year on average were affected by climate-related disasters in developing countries, compared with about one million in developed countries.

For developing countries, the best way to reduce their vulnerability to the impact of climate change is to develop by diversifying their economies, strengthening infrastructure, and developing health systems.

At present. 1.6 billion people--that is about one-third of the developing world's population--are without access to electricity.  This implies a double challenge--reducing damaging carbon emissions while meeting the energy and growth needs of the world's poor countries.

Transition to climate-resilient and low-carbon growth will require financing and technology transfer to developing countries.  The need for external financing to be met from a mix of private and public sources could be on the order of $100 billion a year by the year 2030 for mitigation of carbon emissions, and $28 to $67 billion a year for adaptation to climate change.  This will need to be new, additional financing, not a diversion of resources from other development programs.

The fourth point is that more and better aid is needed.  The time to deliver on aid commitments to support the efforts to meet the MDGs is now.  Donors must expedite aid delivery.  Just when a number of countries are expanding their capacity to utilize increased resource productively thanks to their reforms, aid is stalling, indeed falling.  Official development assistance from OECD-DAC countries declined by 8.4 percent in real terms in 2007 on top of a 5 percent real decline in 2006.  This trend must be reversed.

The aid architecture is changing with the emergence of new sources and modalities of aid, including new donors such as China and India, global vertical funds, and an increased role in aid of private donors.  The new sources and modalities of aid promise more resources and innovation but also pose new challenges for aid effectiveness and coherence.

The High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness scheduled to take place in Accra in September that Alan mentioned provides a timely opportunity to address the issue of scaling up of aid and its effectiveness in a changing aid landscape.

Increased private flows to developing countries create opportunities to catalyze and leverage more private capital in support of development, including through innovative public-private partnerships, and both borrowers and creditors need to pay attention to debt sustainability considerations to prevent a reaccumulation of unsustainable debt following debt relief.

The fifth point is that trade can and should be harnessed more effectively to contribute to strong and inclusive growth.  The international community must aim for a successful Doha outcome in 2008.  The current high food prices provide a window of opportunity to break the impasse on agricultural trade liberalization. 

Aid for trade should be increased to help strengthen poor countries' trade-related infrastructure and services and enable them to take advantage of trade opportunities promoting more inclusive globalization.

Trade policy should also aim to facilitate transfer of environmentally friendly technologies by removing barriers to trade in environmental products and services.

Finally, the sixth and last point of the agenda refers to international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and others.  The key message here is more effective leveraging.  The report calls for more effective leveraging of IFI support as their relative financing role declines.  Even though the multilateral development banks had record disbursements in 2007, they had a share of less than 10 percent in total net ODA, that is, official development assistance.

The report calls for more effective leveraging by IFIs through:  1) a sharper differentiation of products and services across member countries, including a strong focus on low-income countries, fragile states, and concentrations of poverty within middle-income countries, to help the world's "bottom billion" grow and connect to the global economy; 2) use of knowledge services as a critical means to enhance development leverage; and 3) stronger engagement in the increasingly important global and regional public good agenda, such as combating climate change, both through direct intervention and by creating an enabling environment to leverage the private sector.

Thank you.

MS. TUCK:  Thank you.

Let us now turn to Mark Plant from the IMF.

MR. PLANT:  Thank you, Merrell.

Let me reiterate what my colleagues have said, that this was very much a joint collaboration and a very fruitful one between the Fund and the Bank.

I would like to comment briefly on three subjects more in the Fund's domain.  One is the global economic outlook and financial market turbulence and its effect on development.  Secondly, I'll say a few words about food and oil prices, and thirdly, a few words about growth strategies over the longer term, particularly in Africa.

On the global economic outlook, as we have said for the last four or five years in the GMR, the global economy was favorable to growth and poverty reduction in developing countries in 2007.  Overall economic activity worldwide grew at 4.9 percent, and growth in emerging markets and developing countries registered 7.9 percent in real terms.

But for 2008, there are some clouds on the horizon.  Financial market turmoil slowed the momentum of growth toward the end of last year, with economic activity in the advanced economies decelerating rapidly in the last quarter of 2007.  Nonetheless, activity in emerging and developing countries remained buoyant.

Also, headline inflation increased in all Regions, and many emerging and developing countries are now facing inflationary pressures from strong domestic demand as well as higher food and energy prices.  The risk that inflation could pose for sustained high levels of growth and poverty reduction remains a concern.

Thus, our projections for 2008 are less optimistic than in the past.  We project that global growth will slow to 3.7 percent in 2008 and will only gradually regain momentum in 2009.  Growth in emerging markets and developing countries is projected to slow to 6.7 percent in 2008.  And risks are tilted toward the downside.  If the turmoil intensifies, emerging and developing economies are likely to be more affected.

Reducing these risks will require joint efforts in advanced and developing economies to ensure the appropriate mix of demand management policies, and at the same time, advanced and developing countries must continue the long-term work to strengthen financial markets throughout the world.

One area of immediate concern to many developing countries and their policymakers is the rapid increase in food and oil prices.  The impact of these quickly rising prices differs considerably across countries, and thus policy responses need to be tailored to country-specific circumstances.

It is hard to tell to what extent the recent price increases are in fact permanent.  The speed and size of the price increases have been large.  Thus it is understandable if countries introduce temporary target subsidies to protect the poorest.  For example, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Cote d'Ivoire have all reduced certain import duties or taxes in the last few months.  Limited food subsidies have been put in place in Guinea, Ethiopia, and Lesotho.

But short-term measures to protect the poor need to be effective.  Untargeted subsidies to lower domestic food prices, direct price controls or export bans are hard to enforce and have a disincentive effect for producers.  They also disrupt the long-term trade relations needed to ensure an adequate food supply throughout the world over the years to come.

Thus, the most effective response for developing countries is to step up efforts to remove supply side constraints to agriculture by providing better infrastructure, a stable regulatory environment, and access to financing.  This will increase productivity and food supply.  Good examples of late include efforts by Madagascar and Sierra Leone to improve agricultural production, storage and distribution. 

In some countries, when it appears that the shock is permanent or is having significant second-round effects, tighter monetary or fiscal policies may be needed to stave off an inflationary cycle.

Multilateral policy efforts should ensure international free trade in commodities, including through reducing protectionism in the food and biofuel markets of the European Union and the United States.

The IMF stands ready, in close collaboration with the World Bank, to give countries advice on the appropriate monetary policies and fiscal policies and to provide financial support to the countries where price shocks are having a significant impact on the balance of payments.

Let me turn lastly to a longer-term concern, that is, growth strategies in developing countries, particularly in Africa.

In Africa, overall growth has been encouraging.  GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa grew by about 6.5 percent in 2007 and is expected to slow only modestly in 2008.  But growth of well over 7 percent a year is needed to make progress on poverty.  Thus, I want to reiterate the need for a renewed international effort to promote growth in Africa.  Donors should scale up aid in line with their commitments at Monterrey and Gleneagles, and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa should step up their efforts to eliminate the impediments to growth.

As Zia mentioned, any growth strategy should take into account the specific circumstances of countries.  However, some successful strategies will have the following elements in common--first, macroeconomic stability.  Stable macroeconomic conditions help attract the private investment needed to generate growth.

Second is conducive private investment regimes.  The Global Monitoring Report presents evidence for the positive impact of a good private investment regime on growth over the long term.

Third is good governance.  As Zia said, a good public administration has a direct impact on economic efficiency, growth and poverty reduction.  And trade liberalization will help diversification and growth in sectors dependent on large-scale production.

Again, the Fund in close cooperation with the Bank stands ready to support countries in their growth efforts with financing technical assistance and policy advice.  And we will continue to refine the analytic underpinnings of our advice to low-income countries, concentrating on our core areas of expertise, macroeconomic policies and institutions.

Thank you.

MS. TUCK:  Thank you very much to all of the presenters.

Let me now open it up to questions from the media, and I believe there is a roving microphone; if you could just introduce your media organization name and tell us who you are.

We have a question here in the front row.  Hopefully, the mikes are around; you may need to go to the standing mike--sorry about that.

QUESTION:  I am Teresa Bolsa [ph.], and I am a correspondent with EFE [ph.] News Services, a news agency from Spain.

I would like to see if Mr. Qureshi could tell me how is the situation in Latin America in terms of achievement of the MDGs, and also in general, why do you think this is happening?  I mean, what is it that countries are not doing that they should be doing, and who is to blame for this?

Thank you.

MS. TUCK:  Thank you.

We may take a few more questions and then try to answer these.

Did someone have a question back there?  It's a bit hard to see.

Yes, sir.

QUESTION:  Fernando Echsman [ph.] from Gazetta Mercantile Brazil.

            Could you please make some remarks specifically to the situation in Brazil, please?

MS. TUCK:  Thank you.

Other questions?

[Pause.]

MS. TUCK:  Anybody?  No.

Then, why don't we start with these two questions, one on how Latin America and the Caribbean is faring in terms of progress toward meeting the MDGs, and then the other question more specific to Brazil.

Perhaps we can start with you, Zia.

MR. QURESHI:  Latin America as a Region is doing overall much better than two Regions that are lagging behind seriously--Sub-Saharan Africa, which is, as I said, lagging behind all MDGs, and South Asia, which is lagging seriously on the human development MDGs.

Latin America is on course to meet, for instance, the poverty reduction MDG, the education MDG, the gender parity MDG.  Within the Region, there is of course a different picture.  For instance, poor countries, especially in fragile situations, are in a different situation, and it would be difficult for them on the basis of recent and current trends to achieve most of the goals, for instance, a country such as Haiti.  But overall, the Region is doing well in relation to most of the MDGs.

The attainment of some human development goals is a challenge for all Regions including Latin America--the goals of reducing child mortality and maternal mortality.  In most Regions, there are shortfalls.

Also, for Latin America Region--and it applies especially to countries like Brazil, as was mentioned--MDG 7, which is about environmental sustainability, poses a challenge.  This is the MDG about environmental sustainability, and there are major challenges there.  So, for some of the countries, the middle-income countries in the Region--and the Region has quite a few of those--climate change and environmental sustainability, or MDG 7, would be an important challenge going forward.  But on some of the primary MDGs, shall we say, or basic MDGs, such as poverty reduction, education, and gender parity, the Region is much better-placed than other Regions.

MS. TUCK:  Would you like to add anything to that, Mark or Alan?

MR. GELB:  No.

MR. PLANT:  No.

MS. TUCK:  Okay.  I would also point to some of the factoids.

We mentioned, for example, on the second page of the release that an area of forest equivalent to the size of Panama or Sierra Leone is lost every year to land use changes; so we know that there are very real concerns about environmental degradation.

But let's take the next question from this gentleman.

QUESTION:  Thank you.  Robert Schroeder [ph.] with International Investor.

Let me ask you a question that I think has been ignored for quite some time.  It's a factual question, and I would hope that after 50 years of development activities, we might know the answer to these questions.

It is simply what is the relationship between the number of births into poverty and all of these efforts to raise people out of poverty.  Is there a ratio there that we have learned to understand or at least see whether there is a trend developing?

And if I can quickly add, these are very factual questions, so let me try to sneak a couple of them in.  Does food and medical aid exacerbate or relieve these ratios or assist people in getting out of poverty?

There was mention early on in this report that infrastructure and access to infrastructure is one of the most important ingredients for development.  So my real question is does long-term growth, let's say 10 years or longer--for economic advance, or advances in standard of living or improvement in the quality of life in any given country, what kind of aid is most efficient?  Have we learned that yet, after 50 years of development?  Would it be education, infrastructure, governance, et cetera?

Thank you.

MS. TUCK:  That's an interesting set of questions.

Maybe I can turn to Alan Gelb, and then we'll see as well if Zia or Mark have anything to add on that.

MR. GELB:  Okay.  Maybe just a first comment, and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues, on the relationship between births into poverty and efforts to raise people out of poverty.

I am not sure exactly how to express those kinds of ratios.  What we have seen for quite a number of parts of the world is that they have benefited in terms of growth from a demographic window where countries have sometimes found that as birth rates have declined, and the share of very young people in the economy has reduced, and at the same time, their share of those who are old in the economy has not increased, that they have had a window during which we sometimes see, for example, that savings rates rise and growth rates per heads rise because the proportion of working-age population increases in such countries.  So, quite a number of countries in the world have been going through that kind of demographic window, including some of the Asian countries, and clearly it is useful for countries to get into that window.  Later on, of course, you have the problem of an aging population, but that only comes sometime down in the future. 

So I think you are raising a very important question there, and part of the efforts needs to be to get countries to the point where they begin to see the benefits of some of those changes.

On food and medical aid, my colleagues may want to comment on this, but I would say that food aid can be extremely important in emergencies, in crises.  The incidence of climatic and other crises has tended to be increasing, for example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, and assistance through that period can be very vital.  But that is not enough in terms of moving a Region toward self-sufficiency, in terms of spreading new crop varieties--for example, there are new varieties of rice and cassava which are being developed for Africa which can make a very big contribution.  So one needs to keep the longer-term focus as well and also, I would say, manage food aid in a way that it doesn't disrupt the activities of private markets.

One of the problems about the management of agricultural systems in many countries has been that markets have started to operate, and then sometimes they have been closed off--we are seeing this today sometimes in response to rising food prices--which means that the market institutions don't develop as strongly as they should; people won't invest in storage and in markets when they sense there is a chance of disruptive public action.

So those are all issues that need to be thought about.

Let me stop there and hand over perhaps to my colleagues, who may want to address some of these other issues.

Thanks.

MR. QURESHI:  Thanks, Alan.

Those are very good questions and very fundamental questions.  There are a couple of numbers there that may be of interest.

While meeting the poverty reduction MDG is a big challenge for many countries--Sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind--we should also recognize what has been achieved, and what has been achieved is quite impressive.  Between 1990 and 2004--that is the latest year for which we have poverty estimates; later in the year, we will have numbers for 2005--but during this 15-year period, the number of extreme poor, those living on below one dollar a day, declined by about 280 million.

QUESTION:  [Inaudible; no microphone.]

MR. QURESHI:  Well, we are, because--I was going to give you another number there, that in the past five years alone, the decline in poverty was 150 million, which is a stunningly high number over a five-year period, and this decline of 280 million in that 15-year period occurred at a time when the population was increasing.  So it's not that this is a decline in a static population.  Over the same period, world population increased by roughly one billion.  So, notwithstanding the increase in population by one billion, the absolute reduction in poverty was 280 million.

So the world as a whole is winning the battle against poverty.  It is not only reducing poverty in relative terms but also in absolute terms notwithstanding very rapid growth in population.

And in terms how aid can be more effective, whether for health, for infrastructure, there are a couple of important overarching fundamental lessons that one can draw from aid experience.

It is not so much determining in an a priori sense that the health area is more effective than education.  It really depends on what the recipient country needs, what are its development challenges.  So country ownership, leadership, of the development agenda is important, and that is a fundamental principle of poverty reduction strategies that the Bank and the Fund work together on with countries.

QUESTION:  [Inaudible comment; no microphone.]

MR. QURESHI:  Correct, and I was coming to that.

So, first, the country needs to articulate clearly and own its development priorities.  Some of that would relate to health, some to education, some to growth in general; economic growth is fundamentally important.  And it needs to have the capacity then to implement that strategy where we need to work with the country to be able to do that.  And governance, combating corruption, is an important part of that agenda.

Then, the modalities through which donors provide aid are important, too.  For instance, aid should not be tied; it should be more predictable; and that DAC agenda is there.

But these are some of the fundamental elements, country ownership and leadership of the development agenda so that there is a clear articulation of priorities, that there is capacity to implement those in a framework of good governance, and that the aid process is supportive of that framework.

There was earlier a question which I did not answer--I think it was from the gentleman there who perhaps left--that we are saying that so many countries are falling behind, and why is that; what are they not doing right.

I think the answer to that is implicit in what we said, what Mark said, and what I tried to say earlier, that there are two or three fundamental elements that go into producing strong and sustained growth.  There is the macro side, the macroeconomic policies; you need to be able to mobilize the private sector, provide a business-friendly investment climate to entrepreneurs and support that through key infrastructure; and there needs to be good governance.

So, countries which are failing to achieve strong growth are not doing well on one or the other or all of these dimensions, and an important part of the governance aspect is capacity, as I said earlier. 

Also, part of the shortfall is due to the fact that development partners have also not done what they need to do, because it is a collaborative effort.  There is mutual accountability for these goals under the Monterrey Consensus.  Aid commitments have not lived up to what they were.  The aid numbers are way short of the Gleneagles targets.

On the trade front, there is an impasse on Doha.  There is more progress on debt relief, but on aid and trade, the international community has not delivered on its commitments.

But fundamentally, it is countries' own efforts, it is their endeavor, it is their development; but development partners have a role to play, and in some respects, that is not quite there.

MS. TUCK:  Thank you.

Yes, the gentleman here.

QUESTION:  Hi.  My name is Peter Thompson, and I am from World Press Center.

My question is for all three speakers, and I don't want it to appear like a tactical nuclear weapon has been dropped in the heart of the IMF, so this is not a critical question.  It is actually a question.

It is that all the information that is generated around the world about the status and the evaluation reports and all that, about all the efforts that are going into achieving the Millennium Development Goals, all of that stuff is available--a great deal of it is in the public domain--and yet it is in a form that enables the voters of the North to hold the Northern donors to account.  And I am interested, given that it is possible to simply start putting this stuff together rather than not putting it together, and putting it on lots of individual websites and emailing it to a limited list of people, given that it is possible to put together a complete record of each of the MDGs for all voters to see, why aren't the multilateral institutions doing that?

MS. TUCK:  Okay.  This is an excellent question, and I am a Communications Officer, so I can't resist saying that there are campaigns on the Millennium Development Goals, and there are efforts to inject some of these development issues into national campaigns, whether they be in the United States or in the UK.  And I know we have people like Gordon Brown pushing very hard to make 2008 a year of action on the Millennium Development Goals and indeed to make the goals of halving poverty, of getting safe and accessible water to a larger number of people--these kinds of goals--there is an effort to humanize them rather than to just have a lot more acronyms.  It is frankly not an easy thing to do, but it is certainly something that we need to do a much better job of, so let's see what the experts say.  Let me turn it over to them.

Maybe we can start with Alan.

MR. GELB:  I think this is a really interesting issue that you brought up here.  I guess one of the objectives of the Global Monitoring Report when it was conceived was in fact to provide the kind of information base for the very question that you are raising, because the report, as it rolls from year to year, does try to keep track of what has happened, for example, in terms of aid flows versus aid commitments, and that's one of the areas here where it is tracking aid flows, comparing them with aid commitments from the various high-level meetings, questions like the financing of debt relief, questions like the development friendliness of trade policies in the industrial as well as in the developing countries.

So I think that a report like this provides the basis for the kind of campaign and monitoring that you are talking about, and what you are saying is that this needs to be taken a stage further, and it needs to be moved into outreach in a way that the message perhaps becomes as accessible as possible to the political constituencies in these countries.  And we would agree with you very much that that should be done. 

We do have our own outreach activities, and we encourage others to join with us in these outreach activities and working with the report.  It is discussed; it is disseminated quite widely.  But we take your point that much more needs to be done of this sort.

Maybe my colleagues would like to comment on that.  You can talk perhaps a bit about the kinds of follow-up processes that you see from the report as well.

MR. QURESHI:  Yes, I think that is an important point.  Even though we do a lot of dissemination through various means--web-based, through seminars, through traveling to various countries to present the report, in Europe, in developing countries, and we will do that this year--but collectively, I think we perhaps need to do more of this.

With respect to this report, we should also note that this report serves as an agenda document for the Development Committee meeting, which consists of Finance or Development Ministers of all the membership of the Bank and the IMF.  So it does get a level of political hearing which other similar reports do not, because even though they are put out, they are not specific agenda documents, except for the World Economic Outlook, which plays a similar role in the context of the IMFC Meeting.

But with respect to the voters, the political framework in major countries, we exert a lot of effort to reach them, and we will do the same this year.  We have a number of seminars already lined up in different countries, including here.  But the more we can do of that, the better, and I think your point is well-taken, especially on issues such as aid, trade, and now climate change, where the weight of public opinion is quite important because at the end of the day, many of these decisions are political decisions.

MS. TUCK:  Thank you, Zia.

Do you have anything to add, Mark?

MR. PLANT:  I would just point also to the two big meetings that will take place later in the year--the Accra High-Level Forum and the Doha--where a lot of this information is going to come together for the world leaders to look at, and I think it will be in a more consumable form than it is today.

MS. TUCK:  And I should also remind people that in terms of resources, we are having a website for the Global Monitoring Report that goes live in about half-an-hour, and that is www.worldbank.org/GMR2008.  But I think the point is a more fundamental one, that whether it is Al Gore using a big advertising campaign on global warming, or Bono and the Data Group pushing on aid and trade, these are very important issues which require collective campaigning, and not just technical reports by our institutions.  So I appreciate the question and the comment.

I will then close the press conference and thank everyone for coming.  Again, there will be a transcript during the course of the day; you can just check at our Press