Resources for social development.
Public Finance and Management › Vol. 5 Nbr. 2, March 2005
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Extract
Resources for social development.
Abstract
Considerable additional funds at globally coordinated disposal are recognized as needed to fulfil the social objectives that the world has officially adopted. There are potential routes to obtaining these funds that avoid the political difficulties that 'donor' countries commonly experience in attempts to increase their budgeted Overseas Development Assistance. International tax cooperation can also put large additional fiscal resources at the disposal of developing-country governments--at no cost, and indeed positive fiscal advantage, to most of the OECD countries. Some efficient and equitable devices for enhancing local-government finance have yet to be fully exploited in many countries. Community mobilization, appropriately structured, can greatly enhance the amenities and earning power of poor rural and urban people, while also potentially promoting social harmony. Private fortunes constitute a large potential source of development finance, until recently largely untapped, that may be attracted through the new institutions that are coming into being. By means of appropriate incentives, commercial enterprise may have its research and development capacities harnessed to the needs of the world's poor. Non-governmental organizations have shown their capacity for acting as intermediaries in channelling finance effectively and efficiently, from official and unofficial donors and potentially the financial markets, for the development of the small household enterprises of very poor people. Introduction Regardless of where exactly the boundaries of 'social development' are drawn, its deliberate promotion on behalf of the public clearly requires resources. The elements of social and economic development (however precisely defined) interact, as both do also with peacekeeping and peacemaking and the enforcement of human rights. The Millennium Development Goals, a set of social and economic objectives formally adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of the world community to be fulfilled by the year 2015, will require, according to a World Bank estimate [(Devarajan et al., 2002)], an additional US $30-70 billion a year in public spending. The Zedillo High-Level Panel of 2001 gave estimates of the extra resources needed that seemed to imply a total of US $65 billion a year. These estimates are of the general order of magnitude of the total Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) currently provided by the high-income countries a...See the full content of this document
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