Access to finance,market helps achieve SDGs: analysts

Star Business Report

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Access to finance, markets, convenience, skills and information are necessary to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) within 2030, said businessmen and policymakers yesterday.

Macroeconomic stability and political calmness are also very crucial in attaining the SDGs, they added.

The views came at a session titled “Inclusive financing for SDGs in Asia and the Pacific” on the second day of a three-day Asia-Pacific Conference on financing for inclusive and sustainable development at InterContinental Dhaka.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Bangladesh is organising the summit in collaboration with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), Asian Development Bank’s Trade Finance Programme and the London Institute of Banking and Finance.

“SDGs are people-centric development goals…To achieve that goals a platform is needed where at least five accesses must be ensured for all,” said Ajith Nivard Cabraal, senior economic advisor to the Sri Lankan prime minister.

People need to have access to finance because it can develop entrepreneurship and create jobs, said Cabraal, who is also a former governor of the Sri Lankan central bank.

He said access to markets were also necessary for helping producers sell their products from every corner of a country, so roads and infrastructure have to be ensured.

And they need access to convenience, for example, water, healthcare, electricity and all other government services and it will improve peoples’ standard of living, he said.

Access to information, education and communication is imperative and access to skills is also important, he said, adding that after ensuring all these accesses, a country needs to ensure macroeconomic stability.

Syed Manzur Elahi, a leading business icon and former advisor to a caretaker government in Bangladesh, echoed the same.

All the developed countries like Japan and South Korea put emphasis on skill development because skilled people are assets, he pointed out.

Elahi, also chairman of Apex Footwear, questioned how SDGs could be achieved without connectivity and how industrialisation could be promoted without improvements in electricity supply.