Conference on “Advancing the Development Agenda in the Global South”
Hosted by ORF America and the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP)
The 2025 World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings are taking place in uncertain times for the global economy. The sweeping tariffs announced by the U.S. government have upended one of the main pillars of globalization. In addition, the rising debt burden in both developed and developing economies, the cutback in development assistance by the United States and Europe, and the expanding gap between the need for resources to combat climate change and its availability all add to the sense of uncertainty that policymakers would need to navigate over the coming years. In this changed scenario, how can the developing countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia — loosely known as the Global South — find solutions to address issues of economic growth, equity and sustainability?
Keynote: Rethinking the Development Agenda amid Global Economic Turmoil
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Former Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Government of India and Distinguished Fellow, CSEP
Session 1: Institutional Reform and Debt Sustainability
Auguste Tano Kouamé, Country Director for India, The World Bank
Rakesh Mohan, President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow, CSEP
Moderator: Udaibir Das, Distinguished Senior Fellow, ORF America
Session 2: Advancing SDGs, Food and Health Security
Eduardo Gonzalez-Pier, Former Deputy Minister for Health, Federal Government of Mexico
Purnima Menon, Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Moderator: Sandhya Venkateswaran, Senior Fellow, Human Development and Health Policy, CSEP
Session 3: Increasing Just and Equitable Climate Finance
Rogério Studart, Senior Fellow, Brazilian Center of International Relations (CEBRI)
Ridhika Batra, Vice President, Corporate Affairs (Americas), The Mahindra Group
Moderator: Anit Mukherjee, Senior Fellow, ORF America
Event Summary
The keynote address delivered by Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia – one of the architects of India’s economic reforms in 1991 - focused on rethinking the debt, human development and climate challenges amidst the current global economic turmoil. His remarks underlined that these issues are not new. Instead, the pace of change is more intense than in the past, lending urgency to the calls for the reform multilateral organizations, global trade, development assistance and raising climate finance, in addition to confronting the challenges of labor displacement due to technological change.
The first session delved into institutional reform and debt sustainability. Over 60 countries are poor, fragile, and lack access to affordable capital. Coupled with issues of climate change, these countries are forced to choose between debt service or economic development. Speakers highlighted the fact that external aid can sometimes exacerbate debt problems through currency appreciation thereby handicapping exports from developing countries. Therefore, reform must focus more on proactive steps like redesigning public financial management, rebalancing risk, and shifting from reaction to resilience in economic policymaking. Additionally, both borrowers and lenders need to be more transparent to enable multilateral institutions to identify needs and priorities enabling them to bridge the gap.
The second session explored issues of SDGs, food, and health security. These continue to matter to the developing world and here indeed is the importance of developing countries or “South-South cooperation”. For example, countries in Latin America have addressed malnutrition through regional cooperation and can share this expertise with other countries and regions of the Global South. Going forward, developing countries should refine their capacity for more collective action in meeting the SDGs, creating platforms for knowledge exchange and access to resources that are becoming increasingly scare in the current global scenario.
The third session explored how to increase access to just and equitable climate finance. Key to addressing this issue is to define the respective roles of the public and private sectors. Sovereign financing through both domestic resource mobilization and access to external financing can send a positive signal to the private sector to invest at scale, focus on high-impact sectors and identify projects for collaboration. In the long run, this can drive innovation and accelerate adoption of new technologies. With the withdrawal of the United States from the COP process, the upcoming COP 30 meeting in Belém can drive more collective action from the Global South, especially Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, to mobilize climate finance and access to technology in an uncertain geopolitical environment.
