2 July 2019

Marriott Hotel 

Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be with friends and colleagues today, representing a finance and economy sector of Kazakhstan.

First of all, I would like to thank the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan for co-hosting this event with us. For years UNDP has been a close partner of the Government of Kazakhstan working hand-in-hand on various development issues. We have been providing policy advice, strengthening the institutions and systems, informing this with research as well as the results of the concrete demonstration projects at the grass root level. UNDP supports the SDG nationalization process and SDG governance structure established for that.

Today’s topic is Financing for Development, which is an important element of the SDG implementation. The latest UN report on Financing for Development shows that interest in sustainable investment has been growing but not yet materializing at the scale required and at places where it is needed.

I invite you today to start a dialogue on the Sustainable Development Goals financing in Kazakhstan. We should focus on strengthening the Government’s abilities to link the SDGs to its public finance. This can help both in terms of SDG reporting and having a clear sense of how, exactly, the state budget is financing SDG achievement. The role of the business sector in SDG finance is vital, too. Today we would like to talk about new ways Kazakhstan can mobilize and measure the impact of its investments in terms of SDGs implementation.  

Sustainable development and SDGs are about adopting the whole of the government approach to development policies and programming. This reflects the integrated nature of sustainable development, in which economic growth, social stability and environmental sustainability are best pursued in tandem and a need to identify and build on synergistic drivers of accelerated progress towards sustainable development (for example, gender equality) which can generate positive feedback effects across economic, social and environmental development dimensions.

In an upper-middle income country like Kazakhstan, the bulk of the resources for financing sustainable development and the SDGs come from domestic sources – especially from the state budget. Thus, financing SDG achievement is very much about brining the SDGs into public finance management. This can be done by clarifying the linkages between the state budget and SDGs and improving the efficiency with which public resources are used to finance development projects.

UNDP is gearing up for this challenge through many exciting initiatives, not least by establishing a new Finance Sector Hub and launching SDG Finance Collaborative.

And finally, the other reason we are here is to discuss the importance of the finance for development assessments (FDA). UNDP’s Bangkok Regional Hub has already performed these assessments in Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, and many other countries. The process is on-going in Argentina, Egypt, Uganda and Liberia. There is some preliminary/preparatory DFA work now being conducted in Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Our proposition is to add Kazakhstan to this list.

Having all these on the table, we would like to think together about what is next. We, as UNDP, are committed to build on previous efforts in order to support the Government of Kazakhstan. I kindly invite everyone to take an active part in this open and informal discussion so that we can design our next steps.

Thank you!