More private sector funds for sustainable development

Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) called for more systematic help from the private sector in building domestic capital and fostering business in developing countries. The UNDP made this appeal at the 19th Oxford Analytica International Conference on 20 September 2002.

"We need to be much more ambitious in looking at public-private partnerships commensurate with the scale of demand in a world where more than a billion people do not have clean drinking water or sanitation and two billion do not have electricity, " he said.

Twenty-nine of the world's largest economies - measured by value added - are corporations. Chile's output equals Exxon's. Four out of every five consumers already live there, and 63 million of the net 64 million people being added to the planet every year are in developing countries. But those are markets that will not be accessible and will not grow unless the image and behaviour of companies change radically.

UNDP is taking the lead in monitoring and auditing the Millennium Development Goals - the global targets endorsed by world leaders at the Millennium Summit and reaffirmed at Johannesburg. UNDP is developing new strategies on how to help countries achieve the goals, including mapping out ways in which public-private partnerships can be developed.