Please understand that every euro or dollar invested in education will spearhead the growth of your country!
In 2000 the international community agreed the Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs). These included eradicating extreme poverty and achieving universal primary education. In 2002, the world’s governments backed up these goals with the Monterrey Consensus, which addressed how to leverage the enormous investments needed to achieve the goals. The Monterrey Consensus recognized that governments (and international development banks) do not, by themselves, have enough funds, or expertise or initiative to meet the investment requirements for achieving the MDGs.
The Monterrey Consensus recognized that more private investment, both domestic and international, is essential. And it asks governments to undertake the policy reforms needed to encourage more private sector investment. Many people don’t fully appreciate the historical significance of this feature of the Monterrey Consensus. Just ten years ago, many people still considered that business and private investment were part of the problem, and not an essential part of the solution!
Despite this apparent priority given to education, the targets and goals for education respectively set, following 2000, in the Millennium Development Goals and the Education for All World Forum, will not be met. Many children, therefore, still do not enjoy access to free and compulsory primary education, an objective that was already established in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. In several countries, adult illiteracy remains far too high. Achieving these basic education goals will require much greater commitment, including increased budgetary means and more qualified teachers.
In only 40 years South Korea was able to double the mean years of schooling (from 6 to 12 years) and at the same time get remarkably close to the 45-degree line marking the hypothetical scenario of perfect equality of schooling.
Governments need to support the private sector in creating education and employment policies taking into account market needs and especially focusing on vocational education and lifelong learning, develop policies to encourage firms and governments to invest in employee training programs, promote private sector involvement in the development and monitoring of governmental human capital development policy, adopt labor market policies which balance social and economic interests, encourage employment and labor mobility, ease transition costs by adopting employment strategies and active labor market measures to help workers move into more productive industries, support start-ups and micro-enterprises, facilitating their access to basic business services and reducing regulatory compliance costs enhance and complement access to financial instruments, including access to equity and venture capital promote training and education for entrepreneurs improve the quality of regulation, taking into consideration the specific needs and constraints of the small business sector, improve tax policy design and tax policy administration, lowering of tax compliance costs and promotion of the reduction of the informal economy and unfair competition practices based on the systematic evasion of taxes and social contribution.
Investment in education and vocational training is greatly needed. We need to focus on improving managerial and e-skills, competitiveness, and on meeting demand in the labor market. In the public sector, capacity building for the judiciary and public administration is called for. Special emphasis should be placed on introducing and enforcing a code of ethics and fighting corruption.
The importance of mobilizing investment for development can be seen in a few examples. Consider the problem of providing clean water to the 1 billion people who are estimated to lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion who are without access to basic sanitation. In order to meet the MDGs, annual investment in water supply and sanitation in developing countries needs to be doubled, from the current level of $15 billion per year. Another example is electricity. The investment in infrastructure required to provide electricity to the 1.4 billion people who currently live without this essential commodity is approximately $700 billion.
A major reason for these discrepancies between investment needs and actual investment levels is that less than 10 per cent of the investment in essential infrastructure in developing countries comes from the private sector. In water, private investment in developing countries is even declining! And without sufficient investment in basic infrastructure, investment throughout an economy is discouraged.
Build on human capital! Vigorous and sustained economic growth, fueled by investment and entrepreneurship, is needed for the private sector to create more jobs and increase incomes of the poor. In turn, this will generate the revenues that governments need to expand access to health, education and infrastructure services and so help improve productivity. But in many developing countries, investment rates are too low, productivity gains are insufficient, incentives for innovation are inadequate, returns on investment are not sufficiently predictable, and not enough secure, safe and adequately paid jobs are being created in the formal economy.
We will never eradicate poverty without quality education for all!