Journal Article
Aid, Debt Relief and New Sources of Finance for Meeting the Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) now provide a clear set of objectives for mobilizing the international development community, notably in the area of development finance. The recent Millennium Project report recommends that high-income countries should increase official development assistance from 0.25 percent of donor GNP in 2003 to 0.44 percent in 2006 and 0.54 percent in 2015. (1) This would amount to doubling official world aid from its current level, to approximately $120 billion per year. The call for increased aid as well as more debt relief and the creation of new sources of development finance has increased since the UN Financing for Development Summit in Monterrey and the subsequent report of the panel chaired by then President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico on development finance. The February 2005 meeting of G7 finance ministers pledged more aid and more debt relief, and similar statements can be expected from world leaders in the run-up to the UN Millennium summit in September 2005. If action were measured in words rather than dollars, then the problems of development finance would have been solved long ago.