KATHMANDU, JUL 18 - The third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD-3) held in the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, has adopted the Addis Ababa Action Agenda which focuses on creating an enabling environment for financing ambitious set of sustainable development goals in the spirit of global partnership and solidarity.

The agenda is the culmination of months of negotiations among member states of the United Nations, covering seven areas of action in domestic public resources; domestic and international private business and finance; international development cooperation; international trade; debt sustainability;systemic issues; and science, technology, innovation and capacity building, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.

The agenda is of particular significance as it precedes the UN Summit in September for the adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda as well as the UN Climate Change Conference in December. It, therefore, sets the stage for several global development milestones over the next 15 years. The Nepali delegation to the conference was led by Swarnim Wagle, member of the National Planning Commission.

Addressing the conference,  Wagle shared with the international community the country’s aspiration to become a vibrant middle-income nation by 2030 by pursuing a higher trajectory of economic growth within the balanced three-pillar framework of sustainable development goals.

Asserting that capital formation was key to propelling growth at the stage Nepal is at, Wagle called on foreign investors to go to least developed countries (LDCs) and create durable value. He stressed the need for integrated support in favour of landlocked developing countries like Nepal to couple preferential access to world markets with the building of supply-side competencies to ease their entry into regional and global value chains.

Wagle also emphasised the need for augmenting the value of remittance by lowering the cost of transfers, optimising use through financial literacy campaigns, and reducing the heavy social consequences of temporary migration.