Over the past two decades, Samoa has established a solid track record of economic reform and performance. Underpinning these achievements is Samoa’s development agenda, which is articulated in the Strategy for the Development of Samoa 2016-2020 (SDS). The SDS sets out the overarching strategy for accelerating sustainable development and creating opportunities for all, and outlines the key policy priorities that the government is pursuing to achieve.
However, Samoa, like other Small Island Development States (SIDS) faces challenges of fiscal sustainability, and more so the substantial risks from natural disasters and the effects of climate change. The cross-cutting nature of climate change merits a renewed assessment of financial flows ensuring that the government’s approach towards financing is effectively aligned to Samoa’s development goals.
Hence, the Government of Samoa requested the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to undertake a development finance assessment (DFA) to take forward policy and institutional reforms to enable more integrated management of a broader set of finance flows to support the implementation of Samoa’s national priorities and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The overall objective of the DFA is to provide an overview of development finance flows, and the management and institutional arrangements to utilize finance to deliver national development goals and priorities. This includes forward-looking analysis about the most pertinent financing challenges the country will face over the timeline of the SDGs.
Based on these analyses the DFA identifies policy changes and reforms that can support increased mobilization and enhanced management of finance for the SDGs. The resulting recommendations are presented in a roadmap of interventions. The DFA will feed into the development of an integrated national financing framework (INFF), building out these initial interventions to increase the alignment of financing flows to national development goals and the SDGs.