During the discussions of the special theme: climate change, Commonwealth Finance Ministers may over the next few days consider the thorny issue of carbon pricing and blended financing for climate-related investments but Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh last week gave no hint as to Guyana’s position on either.
During a press conference on Thursday on the gathering in Georgetown, Minister Singh had noted that he did not want to pre-empt the discussions beginning today by stating the nation’s position.
According to the draft agenda, the ministers in terms of carbon pricing can examine what steps are needed to place a tariff on carbon so as to provide an incentive towards a lower carbon economy since international discussions are focusing especially on two approaches: carbon taxes and carbon trading.
In relation to carbon taxes, the questions to be examined will be what are the prospects for an international agreement that helps to co-ordinate carbon taxes at the national level and what barriers ministers anticipate within their own economies to introducing carbon taxes that would need to be addressed through an international agreement.
And in terms of carbon trading, the questions that will likely be examined are what has been the experience of member states in relation to generating and trading carbon credits and what lessons would be taken forward in future approaches and agreements to scale up carbon trading.
Blended financing for climate-related investments is to be examined by the ministers in the framework of `Should multilateral financial institutions develop a third window of financing between their concessional funding and loans from ordinary resources to scale up the financing available to developing countries in implementing climate-related investments?’
Apart from these, the ministers may also consider when dealing with the special theme, a Commonwealth initiative on the economics of climate change that could help national governments and local communities to integrate climate change risks into existing national/local development planning processes.
World Bank and IMF Issues
Last year the Ministers recognized the importance of good governance for development and encouraged the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to support moves to strengthen the various dimensions of governance as an aspect of their support for countries’ development.
They emphasized that the current focus on governance should not obscure the Bank’s core focus on poverty elimination. In this context, the Ministers stressed the pre-eminent role of states in promoting good governance; the need for the developed world to help build countries’ own capacity and to find ways to engage with poor countries even where governance is weak; and the mutual responsibilities of industrial countries to ensure responsible behaviour in this context by their citizens and companies.
In relation to small states, the ministers may likely consider, according to the draft agenda, the need for an international framework to address the debt problems of non-HIPC small States; the proposals presented on addressing the labour market issues facing Small States and ways in which the donors can assist them in this regard; and the need for coherent international aid architecture that assists the development of Small States.
Report on gender responsive budgeting
About half of the Finance Ministers did not respond to letters sent out by the Gender Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat in December 2006, which was accompanied by a detailed questionnaire. Only 24 of the 53 countries responded, and the 24 did not include all countries with known Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRBs) initiatives. The focus of this report, according to the draft agenda, is on what has been done in respect of GRBs since 2005 by those governments which have reported, and how GRB has been built into the countries’ budgeting systems. The Report concludes that while there has been progress, it is not the time to be complacent. At the CFMM in 2005, Ministers agreed that they should consider the next biennial review of progress made in implementing GRBs at their meeting this yea. They also urged members that have not already done so to establish an institutional mechanism within their countries to monitor progress on implementing GRBs.
The key role to be played by the Finance Ministries was confirmed in the Communique from the recent Eighth Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting held in Kampala, Uganda, in mid-June 2007.
A synthesis of lessons from the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process on four countries
The four studies on The United Republic of Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi and Bangladesh, were discussed at successive annual meetings of Commonwealth Finance Ministers in 2004, 2005 and 2006. The synthesis will discuss the themes emerging from the studies under six headings: design of the strategy; the extent of country ownership, and how to strengthen it; implementation; accountability; alignment of development partner support; and improving donor practices and procedures and cutting transactions costs.
The conclusions drawn from the studies were endorsed by ministers last year at the CFMM in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Guyana was not present at the meeting and the Finance Minister said on Thursday that he may not have been appointed to his ministerial position a full week when the meeting was held September 12-14 last year.
The conclusions endorsed, in this regard, included the importance of linking medium-term strategies firmly to annual budgets, with Finance Ministries playing a key role in ensuring consistency; the need to explain national strategies to the general population and to engage Parliaments; the advantages of budget support as the most effective and useful form of donor funding, or where that cannot be achieved, the advantages of “sector basket” funding; the need for strong government leadership in encouraging development partners and multilateral institutions to align their support behind national strategies and reduce the administrative burden they place on governments and the corresponding need for donors to respond and ensure that their aid programmes are locally relevant, cost effective and institutionally feasible; the need to ensure that channelling assistance directly through NGOs does not undermine the authority and capacity of governments and the power of learning from other countries’ experiences.
