KUALA LUMPUR: A country's success in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is reflected by the priority it gives to such programmes and projects.
The Finance Ministry (MoF) said based on the analysis of the government's development expenditure (DE) in 2015 and 2020, some SDGs were given higher priorities than others.
Hence, greater effort is needed to identify the cause, financial gaps and alternative sources of financing.
"The current approach of assigning an equal weightage in allocating DE for a programme or project supporting multiple SDGs may be simplistic. Thus, some improvements are warranted in the methodology," said the MoF in its Economic Outlook 2022 report released today.
It noted that the government has also made progress on various fronts of fiscal and economic management.
These include the formulation of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which is targeted to be tabled in Parliament in 2022.
The Act will enable the institutionalisation of fiscal prudence, governance and transparency rules based on global best practices.
To further complement the successful issuance of sustainability sukuk, the government has established the MySDG Trust Fund in collaboration with the United Nations in Malaysia.
The effort provides a platform for various parties, including the government, private sector, non-government organisations (NGOs), individuals and other domestic and international entities, to contribute to achieving SDGS in Malaysia.
With regard to the annual budget, the government continues to coordinate and streamline financing approaches to enable more systematic financing of environmental, social and governance (ESG) programmes and projects comprehensively and effectively.
The MoF noted that achieving the 2030 SDGs is one of the main policy priorities of the government.
As 2030 is less than a decade away, it is imperative for the nation to clearly understand the landscape and identify financing gaps to implement programmes and projects to achieve the SDGs.
The government began aligning its finances to the SDGs in Budget 2021. - Bernama
