Inputs to the Outcome Document

This brief offers a global overview of health spending and highlights the critical role of health expenditure data in shaping policies to achieve the SDG health targets. It calls on countries and global partners to strengthen health expenditure tracking via health accounts to improve policymaking, enhance transparency, and promote accountability.

This brief focuses on the importance of strengthening the coherence and consistency of the international development system with respect to financing sustainable development and climate ambitions. It highlights the fragmented approaches to financing currently prevalent and underscores the need to integrate international commitments regarding sustainable development and climate ambitions with national investment planning and financing processes. A similar integrated approach is called for at the global level as well.

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) significantly drain resources, with trade-IFFs alone accounting 5-30% of total goods trade in pilot countries, financing crime, exacerbating inequalities and instability. Effective action requires data-informed analytics, whole-of-government approaches and stronger international cooperation for common tools and technologies. All countries need evidence-based policies to address IFFs, allowing crime prevention rather than costly corrective measures. FfD4 outcome should prioritize these strategies, resourcing data reporting and establishing a platform for collaboration and methods development.

Integrating Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) into Financing for Development is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While technological advancements offer opportunities, they can disrupt growth pathways and increase inequalities if mismanaged. Key recommendations include directing technology to create middle-class jobs and labour-absorbing sectors, improving access to scientific knowledge and technological innovations through open science and flexible intellectual property regimes, fostering South-South cooperation, and mobilizing development financing, including Official Development Assistance (ODA) to close technological gaps.

Voting right imbalances persist in international financial institutions with respect to the population and size of the economy of their member states. Aiming for greater influence on financing policy decisions impacting developing countries, Asia-Pacific member states should continue on institutional reform discussions. However, strengthening of regional financial institutions in parallel as a complementary approach.

Global FDI flows declined since 2015, hindering progress towards the SDGs. FfD4 should seek to leverage partnerships between investment stakeholders, enhance countries’ readiness to attract investment in SDG, and promote home-country initiatives to channel investment. SWFs and institutional investors possess substantial capital that can be directed toward infrastructure and SDG, while more de-risking initiatives need to be developed. Systematic efforts to advance sustainability standards and address greenwashing is essential to grow sustainable finance.

This brief focuses on the importance of strengthening financial regulations that can accelerate private financing towards the Sustainable Development Goals in the Asia-Pacific region. The brief puts forward actions to deepen banking and capital markets in Asia and the Pacific, as well as outlines a new approach that combines concessional and private finance in the least developed countries in Asia and the Pacific.

The momentum to measure South-South cooperation is growing rapidly, spurred by the endorsement of SDG indicator 17.3.1 and the voluntary ‘Framework to Measure South-South Cooperation’. Developed by the global South, the Framework aims to provide data on South-South cooperation to enable first-ever globally inclusive information on international development support by reflecting the realities of the global South. To unlock its full potential, significant support, technical training, harmonized tools, and targeted assistance, is needed for countries.

Financing the Pathway Towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC): Improving Health Sector Priority Setting

Sovereign Debt Workout Mechanisms: The G20 Common Framework and Beyond

Asia-Pacific experience suggests a central role of rationalized tax structure, strengthened tax administration, and reduced wasteful tax exemptions in episodes of swift tax revenue enhancement. Nevertheless, to achieve greater and sustained results in the longer term, broader socioeconomic progress and improvements in public governance are equally indispensable. Meanwhile, better exploration of tax potentials of direct income and wealth taxes and of the region’s booming real estate markets will be key for further public revenue enhancement.

Better Data on Trade in Services for Effective FFD Strategies

This brief argues that taxation policies on tobacco, alcohol, and sugary drinks present a timely and effective strategy for advancing sustainable development while improving public health and well-being. Health taxes not only generate government revenue through higher tax rates but also promote healthier behaviors, leading to improved health outcomes and productivity gains that benefit society as a whole. Over the next five years, increases in tobacco, alcohol, and SSB taxes could generate an additional $3.7 trillion USD in government revenues globally—an average of $740 billion USD per year, equivalent to 12% of global health budgets and 0.75% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The policy brief emphasizes the need for a long-term perspective and a stable investment environment for CETM projects, highlighting the importance of clear government regulations. It advocates expanding the capital base in developing countries through innovative financing mechanisms and lowering borrowing costs via international cooperation. The policy brief also underscores the importance of a holistic approach to financing, promoting value addition and diversification throughout the CETM value chain.

This policy brief highlights the challenges faced by Asia-Pacific developing economies, in particular LDCs, in tapping the potential of digital trade opportunities to finance sustainable development and discusses some potential policy solutions. It focuses on promoting domestic resource mobilization, fostering international cooperation, and supporting LDCs to participate in digital trade. The key recommendations include closing the digital divide, establishing coordinated digital tax frameworks, strengthening regulatory cooperation, and building digital-trade capacity for MSMEs and marginalized groups.

Multilateral Credit: Filling in the Financial Gap?