OTTAWA, ON, Dec 3 2021 / CNW / – At the top of Carbis Bay at June 2021, we, the leaders of the Group of Seven, have embarked on an ambitious agenda to build back better for the world and urgently reduce the infrastructure investment gap in developing countries, for bring about a radical change in our approach to financing quality and sustainable infrastructure that ensures a strong recovery from the pandemic and rapid progress towards sustainable development goals and international climate and environment commitments, including those recently made in COP26.

Low- and middle-income countries need to increase their investments in infrastructure to tackle climate change and support their transition to zero net emissions,¹ and for health and safety Infrastructure; digital, transport and energy connectivity; education Infrastructure; and move on gender equality and the fight against inequalities. To help overcome this global challenge, we will step up our collective action to mobilize private sector capital and expertise, using all the tools from our respective development and economic toolkits, and strengthen our partnerships with developing countries.

Our shared ambition is to foster global prosperity, sustainable development, connectivity and the transition to net zero by making better use of our economies, our capital markets, our expertise, our technologies and our innovation capacities.

Through a wide range of programs and initiatives, as illustrated in the annex to this statement, we are already supports sustainable, resilient and quality infrastructure in developing countries, and we will use them to achieve our ambition. Collectively, we have invested substantial resources – in 2019 and 2020 combined, G7 members have provided more than 265 billion US dollars in official development assistance,² including for infrastructure. G7 members also provide substantial amounts of additional financing for infrastructure in developing countries through multilateral development banks (MDBs) and their development finance institutions.

But closing the investment gap in connectivity and infrastructure requires a significant change in the way the international system works together. It’s a long term agenda, where we will adopt a common strategic approach, underpinned by the following five principles:

• Support a radical change in our ambition – establish partnerships with developing countries on their infrastructure investment plans as an ongoing priority, as well as increased cooperation, coordination and collaboration between us to ensure that we are greater than the sum of our parts .
• Strengthening regional and national partnerships – build on existing initiatives, motivated by country ownership and based on the needs of partner countries, reinforced by the coordination of the G7 on international engagement through the G20, multilateral organizations and more broadly.
• An approach based on values, underpinned by strong standards – lead a race to the top based on shared values ​​and benefits for developing country partners, calling on all actors to adhere to internationally recognized rules and standards, including those relating to loans and investments.
• Increase funding – mobilize funding and expertise from the public and private sectors, in particular by mobilizing public funding to catalytically attract the private sector; and supporting access to sustainable financing for G7 capital markets.
• Ensure that funding gets to where it is needed and support a more cohesive system overall – advance regional and national platforms as mechanisms for promoting coherence; support developing and emerging market economies to develop and implement their pandemic, sustainable development and climate recovery plans; and matching funding for these plans, backed by our coordinated support.

We are firmly committed to this agenda and to working with partners to move it forward. To respect these principles and the ambition we have set for ourselves, we will first take the following measures:

To maintain focus, we will:

• Build on the working group we have established in Carbis Bay as part of the continued engagement of the G7, to oversee our cooperation, guide our international coordination and identify opportunities for collaboration.

To lead a race to the top on the standards, we will:

• Work within the G20 to support the implementation of existing international principles and standards, building on existing frameworks and the work of MDBs and other international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the G20 Principles for ‘investment in quality infrastructure; and continue work to ensure increased debt transparency, mutual accountability and comparability of debt treatment.
• Uphold a common set of existing social, gender-sensitive, environmental, resilience, transparent, open, economically efficient and financial standards, including debt sustainability, and help countries implement them.
• Engage in efforts for the eventual accession of all G20 countries to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.
• Work with MDBs and through our development finance institutions to broaden adherence to standards by building capacities to implement them at country and project level, particularly with regard to confidence in public accountability and private funding.

To support our ambition to move from billions to billions of dollars in financing our economies, we will:

• Cooperate with MDBs and other IFIs to assess and define the best conditions for mobilizing private finance, in accordance with the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
• Coordinate together, as a G7, with other shareholders and with the MDBs, measures aimed at increasing their capacity to mobilize private financing, in particular by supporting the implementation of the G20 roadmap for sustainable financing.
• Collaborate with other partners to achieve the global ambition agreed by Carbis Bay leaders and endorsed by G20 leaders in Rome, to mobilize $ 100 billion, including through the voluntary channeling of special drawing rights. To this end, we support the call to establish a new Trust for Resilience and Sustainability within the International Monetary Fund.
• Review and further modernize our toolkits to stimulate innovations to help developing countries access sustainable financing from capital markets as well as public institutions, and identify specific regional and national plans, programs and projects on which the G7 can work together.

To strengthen our regional and national partnership approach and promote coherence, we will:

• Work within the G20 to operationalize national platforms, including strengthening support for the existing framework and principles and their implementation, and building on existing initiatives such as the G20 Compact with Africa and Global Infrastructure Facility to strengthen and coordinate partnerships, planning and programming.
• Participate in pilot platform projects to develop and improve best practices.
• Strengthen technical assistance and capacity building, in collaboration with MDBs and the private sector, to help countries develop their plans and pipelines for high quality sustainable projects.

These commitments are the first steps in a long-term partnership, and we welcome and invite others to join us and work with us, to better coordinate globally to reduce the infrastructure funding gap, d ” improve the quality, sustainability and resilience of infrastructure, climate change, protect biodiversity and drive the transition to net zero. We welcome the work of the G7 Working Group on Financing for Development, which has informed these principles, and the upcoming discussion on these issues by the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers. We look forward to reflecting on the progress of this initiative under the German Presidency.

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This document is also available at https://pm.gc.ca

SOURCE Office of the Prime Minister

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