Larry Sacks
Chief Development Officer of the Development Finance Corporation
New York, New York
September 20, 2023
AS DELIVERED
Thank you to the moderators and speakers for facilitating discussion on this very important topic.
The United States is committed to the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, both at home and abroad, by investing in innovation and industrial strength, building resilience, pursuing more inclusive development partnerships, and deploying a more expansive set of tools internationally.
The United States is proud to be the largest provider of Official Development Assistance. However, ODA alone will not be enough to reach the ambitious goals of the 2030 Agenda and must be accompanied by domestic resource mobilization and private investment.
The U.S. private sector invests roughly four dollars for every dollar of U.S. foreign assistance for sustainable development. This increase in private sector engagement presents an opportunity for us to reimagine how we fund development.
Through U.S. government agencies such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and others, we are working with the U.S. private sector, governments, and international financial institutions to increase trade and investment in developing countries. USAID’s Trade Capacity Building Policy and its Aid for Trade support integration of entrepreneurs in developing countries into the global economy, and the DFC-U.S. African Development Foundation African Small Business Catalyst supports small and medium enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa.
The United States is working to bring together development partners and private investors to to maximize the impact of our assistance. The United States mobilizes private sector finance in developing economies by increasing confidence in markets, providing political risk insurance, and furnishing loan guarantees for certain eligible projects.
This type of innovation inspired the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI), President Biden and the G7’s flagship infrastructure initiative which has attracted major investors to better respond to the global demand for high quality infrastructure financing, in low- and middle-income countries, to date mobilizing $30 billion USD.
Although we face complicated and challenging global economic circumstances, including rising food and fuel prices, the fundamentals to incentivize private investment remain the same: investment policies that support good governance, anti-corruption efforts, international labor practices, environmental sustainability, transparency, and respect for human rights and rule of law are essential preconditions to attracting high-quality private investment.
In this regard, the UN system can help developing countries establish policies that create enabling environments that attract sustainable and responsible private investment to transformative sectors such as energy, health, education, infrastructure, and technology.
Thank you for this fruitful discussion. We look forward to working with partner governments, the private sector, the UN system, and international financial institutions to deliver on these shared objectives.
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