Groupe intergouvernemental d'experts du financement du développement, 9e session

Ce discours a été prononcé en anglais et n'a pas été traduit.

Excellencies, colleagues, friends,

Welcome to the 9th session of the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Financing for Development.

I'm sorry not to join you in person, but I am delighted we can gather to tackle questions so central and urgent for development.

Before we begin, a reminder of what brings us here.

This group provides expert space for member states to discuss the issues and challenges they face in financing for development.

Last year, we met under the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

This year, for the first time, we meet under the “Compromiso de Sevilla”.

The Compromiso gives us a landmark agenda for financing sustainable development.

Within the Compromiso, several processes fall specifically to UNCTAD – for example, the Borrowers Platform, or the implementation of the Principles on Responsible Sovereign Borrowing and Lending. But the Compromiso has many facets.

The theme you selected for this IGE – "Advancing the Sevilla Commitment towards a shared framework: Enhancing responsibility, capacity and scalability" – allows us to explore areas that receive less attention but matter just as much.

You chose three questions for this IGE. I’ll say something about each.

First, blended finance.

The concept is straightforward, the promise compelling – for years, models have suggested trillions could be mobilized, especially from the private sector.

Yet progress remains modest.

Why?

Because project-by-project solutions don't bring scale. Scale brings scale.

That means MDBs tripling their investments and crowding in private investments.

IFA reforms that reduce currency volatility.

Risk perceptions that stop overpricing capital costs in frontier markets.

Governments mobilizing domestic resources to its pure potential.

Sevilla engaged with these complexities and constraints.

Our discussions will carry them forth with an open mind and a positive attitude.

Second, trade infrastructure and connectivity.

Developing countries have to urgently tackle their deficit in infrastructure.

For landlocked countries, every extra hour spent at a border crossing is revenue lost, competitiveness eroded, opportunities missed.

For small island developing states, one disaster can destroy the single port connecting them to markets, one blocked maritime chokepoint shocks the consumer prices their people pay.

This IGE will discuss why these questions must be tackled from an FFD perspective.

Third, lastly, financial market actors and credit rating agencies.

Developing countries, especially African ones, pay borrowing premiums that their economic fundamentals don't justify, yet lack the institutional capacity to challenge the methodologies producing these outcomes.

This IGE will ask whether countries can together reshape how risk is assessed and priced in the first place.

One last note: following UNCTAD16, IGE modalities will change. How exactly will be decided during the 72nd Trade and Development Board session in 2026.

This makes your work here especially valuable — you help us understand what works as we design what comes next.

Excellencies, this is your IGE.

Make the most of it.

I look forward to your recommendations and wish you excellent discussions.

I thank you.