Development Finance International
19 April - Washington Pre-Launch of Government Spending Watch
Oxfam America and DFI, in partnership with Publish What You Fund, organized the Washington pre-launch of the Government Spending Watch report, website and database. The pre-launch was attended by many high-level US government officials, advocates and researchers interested in budget transparency and MDG spending. Kevin Watkins of Brookings, Jo Marie Griesgraber of New Rules and Sally Paxton of PWYF commented on the report findings and the overall initiative. For a copy of the executive summary please see here. The Washington launch was preceded by meetings about GSW with other technical partners, including the IMF, World Bank and International Budget Partnership, and also the findings and ways forward were discussed with representatives from many low-income country governments.
19 April - GSW 2013 Report Summary available
The Government Spending Watch initiative was lauched at Oxfam America on 19 April with the presentation of the Executive Summary of the 2013 report .The full report will be launched at the UK launch on 16 May at 12.30 BST at the Overseas Development Institute.
18 April - OIF Ministerial and Technical Meetings
DFI worked with OIF to organize the first spring ministerial and technical meetings of the OIF Finance Ministries Network on Financing for Development. The meetings made decisions on the scope of future work and discussed their preferences for channeling additional concessional financing – via multilateral organizations rather than bilateral development banks or agencies, or global vertical funds. It also discussed priorities for future technical papers and newsletters, as well as plans for intensive assistance to pilot countries in developing financing strategies, and plans for advocacy and coordination around G8, G20 and African Caucus meetings.Activities of the network and relevant news and documents will be published in a quarterly newsletter.
15 April - Global Financial Governance and Impact Report
DFI took part in discussions with New Rules technical partners and Board members on the forthcoming GFGIR, which will analyse the governance and impact on sustainable development of the G20, IMF, World Bank, FSB, OECD and UN. The report will be written by a multi-agency team including DFI and launched at the BWI Annual Meetings.
14-19 April - MTDS Mission to Mongolia
DFI joined a World Bank MTDS mission in Ulan Bator to focus on providing technical assistance in debt management strategy formulation. At the request of the Ministry of Finance, the mission shared the Bank-Fund framework for Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS) development, and jointly with a government team, applied it to Mongolia. In the process, the team provided training on basic cost-risk analysis, data preparation, and preparation of a debt management strategy document.
