The Group shares many of the elements outlined in Administrator's statement, particularly on the diagnosis of the current situation pertaining the constraints and challenges our countries face to finance development in the long-run and make progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Ahead of the Summit of the Future in September and the upcoming FFD4 Conference next year, the Group emphasizes that even if financing gaps are well identified, the problem in our view, goes beyond the sustainability of finance. It has do with the lack of availability of sufficient resources for developing countries, as a result of serious shortcomings in the delivery of the commitments made by developed countries in many areas, including in the Funding compact and the long-standing goal of 0.7% of their GDP as Official Development Assistance established 53 years ago.

To amplify this challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic has deflected the attention of governments away from long-term sustainability objectives by imposing unparalleled injections of resources to rescue national economies, which contributed to sidelining the SDGs and reduced core contributions to UNDP and the UN Development System as a whole. The accomplishment of that agenda demands a profound rethinking of financial instruments, practices, metrics and tools in use, which evidently failed in their ability to mobilize sufficient public and private capital to that end.

We commend UNDP for its significant achievements and the support provided to programme countries, despite decreased core funding and limited resources for development. However, we express concern about the sustainability of the development system given the ongoing liquidity crisis and current funding trends. It is critical that Member States fulfil their Funding Compact commitments to enable UNDP and other entities to respond to rapidly changing development conditions. Advancing multilateralism and the three pillars of the UN system will remain limited without adequate, sustainable, and predictable funding. The Group urges donors to prioritize core funding and contribute further to UNDP's Funding Windows to achieve its Strategic Plan and safeguard its flexibility in responding to diverse country-specific challenges and emerging crises. We also commend UNDP's efforts to diversify its funding sources through strengthened partnerships with UN entities, international financial institutions, and other multilateral partners.

At the same time, the achievement of the SDGs requires significant changes in the current international financial architecture. In that context, the international community should work for repurposing the Multilateral Development Banks' system to catalyze a new generation of public and private investments in the achievement of the SDGs strengthening the global financial safety net to offer greater and more equitable access to international funding during times of crisis, including through regular issuances of Special Drawing Rights; pursuing major governance changes at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to improve representation and legitimacy, particularly through the enhancement of the voice and participation of developing countries in those instances; strengthening of the global debt architecture, including through a platform for debt treatment, improvements to debt transparency and better safeguards on credit rating agencies; and strengthening regulatory frameworks for financial flows and strengthening the international tax cooperation to ensure that it is inclusive and effective.

On the other hand, global digital transformation can bring about important advancements for our collective well-being, but also poses some major challenges for developing countries. To talk about the digital divide, we should mention that, even when since 2010 more than a billion people have gained access to electricity, yet 675 million people live without electricity & 2.3 billion rely on harmful cooking fuels. Despite the progress made in recent years, the SDG target of universal access to electricity by 2030 appears unlikely to be met, especially if the COVID-19 pandemic seriously disrupts electrification efforts. Regional disparities continue to persist and the access deficit is particularly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, where electricity is available for less than half of the population.

The Group looks forward to the Summit of the Future to be held in September, 2024 as a crucial milestone to agree on actions to overcome these and other obstacles to sustainable development and make progress on the reform of the international financial architecture. The Group has been working very hard and remains fully committed and constructively engaged in the intergovernmental preparations of the Summit of the Future, an event that should accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the achievement of the SDGs.

We would like to thank you for the numerous examples you have mentioned about the work of UNDP at the country level to assist developing countries' efforts to pursue sustainable development and the achievement of the SDGs. We encourage UNDP to strengthen its support through the Integrated National Financing Frameworks to further assist governments in financing the SDGs and NDCs, and mobilize innovative finance, capitalizing on digital innovations. We believe it remains critically importance for the UN funds and programs, especially UNDP, to remain focus on those objectives and to contribute to the necessary transformation toward the development we want, as stated in your closing remarks.

To this end, we strongly reiterate the need to significantly increase flexible and sustainable core funding, including multi-year contributions, to enable the United Nations Development System to respond to the increasing demands and challenges caused by the multiple crises that are disproportionately impacting the Global South.

I thank you.

Excellencies,

This session takes place at the critical time when only 17 percent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets are on track to be achieved in the remaining 6 years to 2030. This is evident that there has been limited progress on the commitments made since the adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda will provides the framework on the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The G77 and China stresses that financing is a key driver in accelerating the 2030 Agenda implementation. Developing countries continue to face rising Sustainable Development Goals financing gap estimated between USD 2.5 trillion and 4 trillion annually. This financing gap is heightened by inter alia; elevated debt burdens, limited fiscal space and adverse impacts of climate change undermining the efforts of developing countries to accelerate actions to achieve the SDGs. The G77 and China emphasizes that achieving the SDGs requires new, additional, quality, adequate, sustainable, and predictable financing.

The G77 and China emphasizes that advancing the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda requires provision and mobilization of adequate means of implementation to developing countries. Therefore, the G77 and China stresses that actions and ideas to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and achievement of SDGs should include, inter alia:

- Urgent reform of the international financial architecture, and multilateral development bank governance reform;
- Access to concessional finance by all developing countries, in particular low- and middle-income countries;
- Fulfilment of existing commitments, including ODA and Climate Finance by developed countries and as well as announcement of new commitments;
- Improved global sovereign debt architecture with the meaningful participation of developing countries, allowing for fair, balanced and development-oriented treatment;
- Elimination of the surcharge policy by the IMF;
- Urgent need for scaling up debt swaps for SDGs, including debt swaps for climate and nature, to allow developing countries to use debt service payments for investments in sustainable development;
- Voluntary rechanneling of unutilized Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to developing countries as well as the new allocation of the SDRs;
- Establishment of measures of progress on sustainable development that complement or go beyond GDP;
- Improvement of the multilateral trading system;
- Prevention and combating illicit financial flows that drain resources from developing countries;
- Strengthening international tax cooperation to ensure its inclusivity and effectiveness;
- Refrain from promulgating and applying the unilateral economic, financial and trade measures as these impede the full achievement of economic and social development in developing countries, and;
- Increase Foreign Direct Investment flows to developing countries.
 
The G77 and China calls on developed countries and international financial institutions to take urgent actions in a timely manner to fully implement the Secretary General's proposal for the SDG Stimulus for developing countries to tackle the high cost of debt and rising risks of debt distress, to enhance support to developing countries and to massively scale up affordable long-term financing for development and expand contingency financing to countries in need.

Excellencies,

The G77 and China stresses that this fourth international conference should agree on appropriate actions that advance the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda and SDG Summits Political Declarations as well as Ministerial Declarations.

Finally, the G77 and China reiterates its commitment towards the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The G77 and China looks forward to engage constructively in the conference preparatory activities, including the intergovernmental consultations of its outcome document, with a view of ensuring that developing countries get the required means of implementation that support their pursuit to achieve sustainable development.

I thank you.

The G77 and China extends its deepest appreciation to Ambassador José Blanco, Permanent Representative of the Dominican Republic and Ambassador Merete Fjed Brattested, Permanent Representative of Norway as Co-facilitators of the intergovernmental consultations and their respective team for their exceptional steering of the informal consultations. We particularly commend the Co-facilitators for upholding the intergovernmental nature of the informal consultations in a transparent, open and inclusive manner.

The excellent co-facilitation of the informal consultations concluded with achieving a concise and action oriented Ministerial Declaration, which is before us for adoption. This intergovernmental process should set as an example of all future intergovernmental processes. Furthermore, we commend our coordinators, the experts from Argentina, Brazil, Egypt and Kenya who excellently negotiated on behalf of G77 and China.

Excellencies,

The G77 and China engaged constructively throughout the informal consultations with the sole objective of ensuring that the Ministerial Declaration to be adopted at this year's HLPF contains concrete actions to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2023 SDG Summit Political Declaration. In this regard, the G77 and China despite having concerns on some issues fully supports the final draft of the Ministerial Declaration circulated by Co-facilitators and the President of ECOSOC considering that the text is balanced.

Excellencies,

The G77 and China appreciates the efforts by the Co-facilitators for their resolve to respect the commitment of leave no country or person behind made by all our leaders in 2015 and the integrity of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, we note with deep concern that silence was broken on the formulation by the Co-facilitators on paragraph 17 whose text is verbatim language from paragraph 35 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The G77 and China reaffirms that sustainable development cannot be realized without peace and security, and that peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development. In this regard, the G77 and China further recognizes that the countries in conflict and post-conflict situations, among least developed countries, and countries and peoples living under foreign occupation have specific structural challenges and require context-specific approaches, including targeted national policies and international support measures to address these challenges and to support peacebuilding, State-building activities and sustainable development.

The G77 and China also reaffirms in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the need to respect the territorial integrity and political independence of States.

The G77 and China further reaffirms our firm rejection of unilateral economic, financial or trade measures and reiterates the urgent need to eliminate them immediately. The G77 and China notes with concern that there is no reference to Unilateral Coercive Measures and the need to refrain from applying them against developing countries, despite it being agreed language of the 2030 Agenda.

The G77 and China expresses its disappointment that a vote has been called on paragraph 17, which undermines the commitment made by all our leaders in 2015 and increasingly threatens our collective commitment to achieve the 2030 Agenda. In this regard, the G77 and China urges all delegations to vote in favor of retention of paragraph 17 and the whole Ministerial Declaration incase votes are requested. Despite this vote, the G77 and China wish to state that this verbatim language from the 2030 Agenda remains agreed and any attempts to change this shall not be accepted.

Finally, the G77 and China fully supports the adoption of the Ministerial Declaration. The political commitment and will by all of us to advance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda remain critical in accelerating actions at all levels to achieve the SDGs.

I thank you.