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Building on the Monterrey Consensus: The Growing Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Mobilizing Resources for Development

The World Economic Forum has issued a report calling on the United Nations and its member governments to recognize the key role that partnerships with business can play in delivering education, health and water sanitation services in poor regions of the world. The report comes as leaders gather in New York to assess slow progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), amidst growing calls for UN reform. Business partnerships can harness new resources for poverty alleviation and public service provision in poor countries, according to the Forum's Financing for Development Initiative. Entitled "Building on the Monterrey Consensus: The Growing Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Mobilizing Resources for Development", the report was produced in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The report examines the status and future promise of public-private partnerships (PPPs), which are formed when a private company joins with a government, international agency or non-profit group to work on a specific project. It summarizes a year-long process of consultation with over 200 public-private partnership practitioners and experts from governments, businesses, NGOs, philanthropic foundations and academia. Partnering with the private sector can tap new resources and expertise that are greatly needed in development programmes, according to the report. Based on successful experiments with PPPs in recent years, it states that "the very concept of development appears set for a transformation...."