Seminar on “Financing for Sustainable Development” by Dr. Ehtisham Ahmad

February 7, 2017 | 16:00 h - 17:00 h

We kindly invite you to our seminar with Dr. Ehtisham Ahmad who will talk about

"Financing for Sustainable Development"

Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2017, 4 p.m - 5 p.m.
Venue: ZEF, Walter-Flex-Straße 3, 53113 Bonn, right conference room, ground floor

Abstract
The SDGs, in focusing on dynamic investment issues, require access to both public and private sources of finance. In most multilevel countries, taxes, transfers and fiscal institutions at different levels of government are critical in generating the appropriate incentives and financing for sustainable development. Given the relative importance of wide area taxes typically administered by the central government, the appropriate design of national taxes is critical in laying the basis for other levels of government—to prevent rent-seeking or a destructive “race to the bottom”, say with respect to a carbon tax. The interactions between taxes and spending is critical, as well as that with the design and monitoring of intergovernmental transfers that can negate the incentives for structural change generated by the tax system. Own-source revenues at the sub-national level are critical in ensuring sustainable access to credit and private financing.The presentation draws on ongoing work in Mexico, Indonesia and China, and stresses the importance of learning from relevant Emerging Market experiences.

About the speaker:
<link http: www.lse.ac.uk asiaresearchcentre people bios ahmadehtisham.aspx external-link-new-window external link in new>Dr. Ehtisham Ahmad is a Visiting Senior Fellow of the LSE Asia Research Centre. He is also a Senior Fellow at ZEF, University of Bonn. Dr. Ahmad has held senior positions over the past two decades in the International Monetary Fund (Senior Advisor, Office of Executive Directors; Advisor and Division Chief, Fiscal Affairs Department); and was also a member of the core team for the World Bank’s 1990 World Development Report on Poverty. He has also been Special Advisor to the Finance Minister of Saudi Arabia; as well as Director of the Development Economics Research Program, STICERD, LSE in the late 1980s, and Deputy Director of the Development Economics Research Center at the University of Warwick (to 1986).