Throughout two-days in Johannesburg, Ms. Mohammed attended the G20 Finance Ministers assembly and the ‘Finance in Frequent’ Summit of Nationwide Growth Banks. She additionally spent a day in Cape City at a gathering of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Financial institution Governors.
She represented Secretary-Normal António Guterres at each stops and in her remarks in Cape City, she conveyed the UN’s help for South Africa’s G20 presidency and emphasised the important function of the G20 in guiding the worldwide economic system and enhancing prospects for sustainable improvement.
“The world is dangerously off observe in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals,” Ms. Mohammed acknowledged. “Whereas we’ve got made progress on many points of our improvement agenda, we’ve got additionally confronted a number of setbacks, together with the pandemic, new conflicts, slowing world progress, and escalating borrowing prices.”
Ms. Mohammed highlighted the necessity for proactive measures to help creating nations overwhelmed by debt service, broaden improvement finance, and create a stronger world monetary security web. She pressured the significance of fairer and extra environment friendly tax programs, noting that strong fiscal programs drive financial progress, alleviate poverty, and scale back inequalities.
In Cape City, Ms. Mohammed acknowledged the difficult world financial surroundings, with projected GDP progress falling beneath pre-pandemic ranges and creating nations struggling to converge with richer nations.
She outlined three key actions for the G20: strengthening multilateral improvement banks, adopting a complete strategy to the debt disaster, and enhancing the worldwide monetary security web with the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) at its core.
“We’d like a global monetary structure that may help economies to develop, liberating them from a vicious cycle the place excessive debt results in low funding, low funding to low progress, and low progress again to excessive debt,” she emphasised.
The UN deputy chief additionally engaged with ministers and leaders of worldwide monetary establishments and improvement banks to align efforts forward of the Fourth Worldwide Convention on Financing for Growth, scheduled for June 30 to July 3, 2025, in Sevilla, Spain.
She underscored the important function of this convention in renewing the worldwide financing framework and reaching the 2030 Agenda, urging help for formidable proposals to raise public improvement banks and reform the worldwide monetary structure.
Addressing the problem of home useful resource mobilization, Ms. Mohammed highlighted the $4 trillion annual financing hole for sustainable improvement and the important function of home public finance.
“Home public finance is crucial for financing the Sustainable Growth Targets, rising fairness, and strengthening macroeconomic stability,” she mentioned, and referred to as for future-ready tax insurance policies to make sure truthful world taxation and the significance of worldwide tax cooperation to fight tax avoidance and illicit monetary flows.
Ms. Mohammed famous that many creating nations have vital unmet tax potential and have invested in tax reforms to unlock this potential. She emphasised the necessity for sustained funding in capability improvement based mostly on nation wants and priorities. “Strengthening tax programs requires sustained funding in capability improvement based mostly on nation wants and priorities,” she acknowledged.
The upcoming convention in Sevilla presents a pivotal second to show commitments into actions and construct a fairer, more practical worldwide tax system. “The Fourth Worldwide Convention on Financing for Growth provides a pivotal second to show commitments for home tax reforms into actions, and make tax programs extra truthful, clear, environment friendly, and efficient,” Ms. Mohammed remarked.
In conclusion, the deputy UN chief urged the G20 to guide these reforms, emphasizing that with the proper political will, the connection between finance and improvement might be reworked from a vicious cycle right into a virtuous one.
“With the proper reforms, and with enough political will, we are able to rework the connection between finance and improvement from a vicious cycle right into a virtuous one. That is the promise of South Africa’s G20 presidency – and of your management,” she concluded.
