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Ambassador Agnes Chimbiri-Molande, Permanent Representative of Malawi to the United Nations and Chair of the LDC Group,
Mr. Navid Hanif, Assistant Secretary-General of DESA,
Mr. Christopher Sharrock, Vice President at Microsoft, Excellencies, Distinguished Colleagues,

I thank DESA, especially ASG Navid and his able team, for their excellent initiative to focus attention on the Least Developed Countries in this year’s SDG Investment Fair. This is particularly significant in the lead up to the Fifth UN Conference on the LDCs to be held in Doha, Qatar from 5-9 March 2023.

The implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development continues to remain a critical challenge for the LDCs. The estimated financing gap to achieve the SDGs is in the billions of dollars per year.

Given limited government resources, a considerable amount of private finance is essential to fill this gap. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have the potentials to attract these additional resources.

Mobilizing private investment has been extremely challenging for the least developed countries, even though LDCs have progressively made significant reform efforts in the area of investment policy. They have adopted a wide range of measures to strengthen national policy and regulatory frameworks.

Despite undertaking robust measures, LDCs have not been wholly successful in attracting adequate investment. There has been about 3% increase annually in the past decade – 2011 to 2021 - from $20 billion to an estimated $28 billion. Their share in global FDI remains below 2 per cent. They have not fully benefited from the strong recovery in FDI flows observed globally in 2021.

Furthermore, owing to the ongoing global crises and geopolitical tensions, investment in several priority sectors has almost completely dried up, making the implementation of the SDGs particularly challenging.

The major institutional investors – who are essential to have on board to mobilize the amounts we are talking about – are hesitant to engage in LDCs owing to a host of factors such as high perceived risk, small size of projects, high overhead fixed costs, lack of data and weak infrastructure.

We cannot let this situation perpetuate. We must find ways to overcome these impediments. Events such as the LDC5 Private Sector Forum and this SDG Fair are important platforms to facilitate investment opportunities.

The SDG Investment Fair provides a platform for LDCs to showcase relevant information on regulatory, promotion and protection policies and measures by the LDCs, tailored to reach potential donor and investors. It can connect potential investors to finance various SDG programmes – and there are many success stories too in the LDCs which should serve as an incentive. We just need to make that connection.

Taking into account existing complexities in mobilizing investment, the Doha Programme of Action, adopted in March this year, sets a number of specific measures to mobilize private sector engagement for additional resources.

Provisions of scaled up investment - both from the public and the private sectors - constitute the basic rubric of the DPOA.
The DPOA sets an ambitious target to “adopt and implement investment promotion regimes for least developed countries”. The objective of this regime is to provide financial and technical support for project preparation and contract negotiation, advisory support for investment-related dispute resolution, access to information on investment facilities, improving enabling environments, and risk insurance and guarantees such as through the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

The Doha Programme of Action has issued a specific call to the Secretary-General to “explore the feasibility of establishing an international investment support centre for the LDCs in the form of a one-stop shop to mobilize support for implementation of the investment promotion regime for LDCs and graduated countries” for consideration at the 78th Session of the General Assembly.

Such an international investment support centre could potentially address the investment challenges facing the LDCs, by offering creative solutions and launching new initiatives. Or in making the right contacts and connections between credit rating agencies, donor countries, the LDC recipient countries and private sector entities.

The DPOA also recognizes the rising significance of impact investment as a new public-private financing mechanism for the 2030 Agenda. It is also important in developing mechanisms to channel public and private investment towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the least developed countries.

Distinguished Colleagues,

We are only three months away from the LDC5 – a once-in-a- decade event – which will take place from 5-9 March 2023 in Doha, Qatar.
This Conference will bring together all Member States, convened at the level of Heads of State and Government, as well as the UN system, academia, civil society, parliamentarians, youth and the private sector – with their dedicated tracks and own outcomes.

In Doha, through the Private Sector Forum, we are providing a big platform for the private sector track. Detailed programmes are already laid out to provide a forum to launch a new action plan to foster new partnerships and initiatives with the private sector to deliver concrete results and mobilize additional investment for LDCs.

We expect that in Doha, the private sector will come up with new and innovative measures which will help mobilize long- term investment and finance, to support the objectives of the DPOA and the 2030 Agenda to support growth, increase productivity and create jobs in the LDCs.

The Forum will focus on five priority sectors, which are not only critical for new investments but also have the potential to support growth, increase productivity and create jobs in the LDCs [and these are]:

• Sustainable Energy
• Agriculture and rural development
• Connectivity
• Climate Change
• Sustainable Tourism

The Forum will bring together leaders from the private and public sectors, CEOs of global companies and those from LDCs, impact investors and foundations, heads of international organizations, as well as regional and international financial institutions.

I extend a warm invitation you all to be in Doha

You will hear more about the Private Sector Forum from Christopher Sharrock of Microsoft, who is our partner in this venture.

We must find ways of conveying to the investment community the important opportunities that are available in LDCs.

The negotiators who framed the DPOA had a vision of how to chart a course for the LDCs from post-pandemic crisis into the Decade of Action.

It is our responsibility now to translate that vision into practical and results-oriented solutions.

We hope to make progress on this initiative at Doha and beyond.

I look forward to seeing you all there with concrete ideas and commitments.

Thank you for your kind attention.