Closing the SDG financing gap

Keynote and Discussion with Masood Ahmed, President of the Center for Global Development

Major constraints to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include limited financing, inadequate infrastructure, poor quality institutions, and social norms. In this talk, Masood Ahmed will focus on the financing challenges related to achieving the SDGs. First he will discuss the low levels of private investment that have thus far been mobilised, challenges related to domestic resource mobilisation, and debt sustainability issues. Against this backdrop, he will examine the key issue of how development finance institutions and developing countries can make progress in achieving the SDGs.  

Words of welcome

Mark Hallerberg is Dean of Research and Faculty and Professor of Public Management and Political Economy at the Hertie School. His research focuses on fiscal governance, tax competition, financial crises, and European Union politics.

Keynote

Masood Ahmed is President of the Center for Global Development. He joined the Center in January 2017, capping a 35-year career driving economic development policy initiatives relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade, and global economic prospects at major international institutions including the IMF, World Bank, and DFID.

Ahmed joined CGD from the IMF, where he served for eight years as Director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, earning praise from Managing Director Christine Lagarde as a "visionary leader." In that role, he oversaw the Fund's operations in 32 countries, and managed relationships with key national and regional policy makers and stakeholders. In previous years, he also served as the IMF's Director of External Relations, and Deputy Director of the Policy Development and Review Department.

Chair

Inge Kaul is Adjunct at the Hertie School and served as the first director of the Human Development Report office of UNDP, New York, between 1989 and 1995 and later as Director of UNDP’s Office of Development Studies. Her publications include Global Public Goods (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016), Providing Global Public Goods; Managing Globalization (New York: OUP, 2003) and The New Public Finance; Responding to Global Challenges (New York: OUP, 2006).