United Nations Headquarters, September 21, 2011 Remarks by Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, World Bank Vice President for Human Development 1. Honorable Ministers, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for the opportunity to join you this afternoon to take stock of our progress towards the MDGs and to redouble our collective efforts to achieve the goals by 2015. But let me first express my sincere appreciation to the Government of Japan for hosting the June MDG follow up event in Tokyo, so soon after the tragic events on its Pacific North-East coast, and for continuing to exercise its strong development leadership. 2. The Millennium Development Goals are central to the World Bank Group’s mission and our everyday work. According to our latest Global Monitoring Report on the MDGs, the good news is that two-thirds of developing countries are within reach of the targets for extreme poverty. Moreover, among those developing countries that are falling short on their MDGs, half are close to being on-track. We believe that with better policies and a more hospitable external environment, these countries can still achieve the targets in 2015 or soon after. 3. In this context, let me make a number of observations about the importance of inclusive growth-- at the level of the global economy-- making sure that every country gains from global development; and inclusive growth at the country level – making sure all people in society experience improved well being. We know for example that middle income countries which are on track to meeting the MDGs are still home to most people in the world who are still living on less than a dollar a day. 4. Building momentum toward the MDGs will require continued international cooperation on several fronts. It is important that advanced economies do what is needed to maintain a strong and stable global economic environment in which low income countries can continue growing. Many of these countries have rebounded well from the crisis, but rising prices for food, fuel, and other key commodities are a threat, and the advanced economies need to regain their growth momentum and keep their markets open to developing-country exports. 5. We need to pay particular attention to fragile states – home to over 1.5 billion people – that lag the furthest on the MDGs. In fact not a single conflict affected state has achieved a single MDG! These countries require additional support to help build institutions and move toward a virtuous circle of peace, security, justice, and jobs. 6. During the 2010 MDG summit, the Bank said it was essential to help developing countries get back on track with more growth and jobs and greater accountability to citizens for essential services. Policies for inclusive growth need to be an important component of government strategies for sustainable growth. Rapid growth over extended periods of time is a necessary, and often the main contributing factor, in reducing poverty. Sustained, high growth rates and poverty reduction, however, can be realized only when the sources of growth are expanding and broad-based, with everyone in society equipped and enabled to take edvantage of the expanded opportunities. 7. As Amartya Sen puts it, the goal of development is the “promotion and expansion of valuable capabilities” and expanding freedoms equally for all individuals. We clearly have work to do when it comes to equality for women. Women make up 50 percent of the global population and 40 percent of the global workforce – and yet own 1 percent of the world’s wealth. As World Bank Group President Bob Zoellick said last week in a keynote speech, “we will not release the full potential of half the world’s population until globally we address the issue of equality; until countries, communities, and households around the world acknowledge women’s rights and change the rules of inequality.” 8. With this issue so central to our work, the Bank devoted its 2012 World Development Report to the study of Gender Equality and Development. The Report, launched on Monday this week, finds that sustained growth in many countries during the last century has helped reduce the gaps in some dimensions of gender equality. But growth by itself has not been and will not be enough to achieve gender equality. There is an important role for policies targeted towards reducing the most costly gender disparities that are not responsive to growth. To be effective these policies and actions need to address the root causes of gender gaps, especially by giving women greater voice within their homes and their societies. 9. The main path to sustainable and inclusive growth is productive employment. New jobs generate income for the individual – from wages in all types of firms, or from self employment -- and impart a sense of dignity. And enhanced productivity growth has the potential to lift the wages of those employed and the returns to the self-employed. After all, in many low-income countries the problem is not unemployment, but rather underemployment. Hence, inclusive growth is not only about employment growth, but also about productivity growth. 10. The ability of people to be productively employed depends not just on the economic environment -- what economists refer to as the demand side -- but also their ability to take advantage of job opportunities that exist, so the supply side. We have heard from many employers -- and surveys confirm this -- that many of them cannot find workers with the right skills to fill their positions. We often find high unemployment and job vacancies existing side-by-side in a country which suggest that young people are leaving school poorly-equipped to be hired. Skills development starts early in life with good nutrition and stimulation during the critical phase of development of the brain during the first 1000 days and continues throughout life, including in school and with training on the job. This comprehensive approach to skills development is central to World Bank Group approach to inclusive growth. 11. In addition to productive employment, governments must continue to focus on direct income redistribution as a means of increasing incomes for excluded groups and prevent them from falling into poverty. Social safety nets not only protect the poor from destitution but if well-designed, they can also be a spring board to better opportunities, by enabling households to make productive investments in their future, such as the education of their children, health, and income generating opportunities, and by helping households manage risk and avoid harmful coping strategies. 12. Beyond supporting policies to improve growth and build resilience for families, we are also focusing on “The Access Agenda”: helping to ensure access to basic health, quality schooling, clean water, energy, food, and jobs – looking not just at the numbers, but also at the quality of services. Because it is the most vulnerable people who typically receive the poorest-quality services, improving quality is also a primary tool for improving equity. 13. At last-year MDGs summit, we promised to expand our results-based programs for health by more than $600 million until 2015 – so people have benefits in their hands before the money flows. We are focusing on 35 countries, particularly in East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa that face challenges in achieving the MDGs due to high fertility, poor child and maternal nutrition, and high rates of child and maternal disease. And I am glad to report, we are making significant progress. To help countries achieve the education MDGs, we have committed to increasing zero-interest investment in basic education by an additional $750 million. These investments will focus on the countries – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa – that are not on track to reach the education MDGs by 2015. And we are well on our way to delivering on these commitments. 14. To help countries achieve their MDGs by 2015, we have committed to major increases in our support in key areas such as agriculture and nutrition, where we are putting in place both short-term responses to rising food prices and longer-term support for increasing agricultural production; water and sanitation, where we have also boosted our lending and accelerated improvements in access; and infrastructure – where we have more than quadrupled our lending since 2000. 15. All this aid is crucial, but it is not enough. Therefore the Bank Group is also working with our partners to harvest, create, and share knowledge on what works across the globe to achieve development goals. This global knowledge – generated through better outcome measurement, impact evaluations, policy analyses, and other data and analytical work increases the effectiveness of investments in achieving the MDGs. This is essential, because better knowledge can help improve service delivery throughout the economy. 16. And as we transfer financial resources and expand the knowledge base, we are taking an integrated, cross-sectoral approach to development assistance – a strength of our institution that works across all sectors. 17. As President Zoellick noted at the MDG summit in September, “It is not enough to build health clinics if there are no roads for mothers to gain access to them. It is not enough to train teachers or provide textbooks, if children have to struggle with homework at night in the dark. People do not live their lives in health sectors, or education sectors, or infrastructure sectors, arranged in tidy compartments. People live in families, villages, communities, countries, where all the issues of everyday life merge.” 18. In conclusion, we believe that ensuring equity and reaching the most vulnerable requires pushing forward on many fronts – sustaining and accelerating growth in low-income countries, strengthening institutions everywhere, but especially in fragile states, focusing more attention on the quality of service delivery, and taking an integrated, multisectoral approach to removing barriers to development. 19. And even as 2015 approaches, we need to keep innovating and learning about what works. Achieving development goals will not hinge on any one new idea, or even a handful of good ideas, but on continuously improving what governments, their development partners, and civil society groups do. Thank you. |
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