Middle-income countries (MICs) are the true barometer of the state of sustainable development in the world, said Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita on Tuesday during the Ministerial Segment of the High-Level Conference on Middle-Income Countries, with the participation of 32 countries and 23 UN development agencies and other international institutions.
Speaking at the opening of the High-Level Ministerial Conference held under the theme, “Solutions to Meet the Development Challenges of Middle-Income Countries in a Changing World,” Bourita noted that these countries are the “middle class of international society.”
He highlighted their place and weight in the global economy, their assets and demographic dynamism, and their diversity and geographical and cultural representativeness, noting that they are also a systemic lever for regional and international peace and stability.
It’s in the MICs where the finest economic and societal success stories are seen, and some of the most inspiring experiments in progress and reform, carried out in the face of adversity, he said.
The healthy economies in middle-income countries are beneficial to the world economic order, and indeed to the world order itself, and these countries face similar challenges, notably ongoing stagflation, a growing debt burden, and increasing impediments to international financing, which is hampering progress towards sustainable development goals.
The minister said gaps in development cooperation have widened at a time when MICs need special attention more than ever, noting that sustained cooperation is needed to strengthen investment in sustainable development and preserve the development momentum they have thus far been able to build.
The conference is equipped to be a formidable lever for international action–first and foremost economic–for the benefit of all its members, individually and collectively, in calling for an awareness of the importance of these countries and an appreciation of the challenges they face.
As such, political stability, economic progress and social prosperity are neither a monopoly nor a cartel, he added, pointing out that they are nothing other than the universal capital of the Society of Nations, if it is to indeed be an International Community inclusive of all stakeholders.
The MICs must have the ambition to anchor the idea that this grouping is not a “sub-group;” rather, they constitute a grouping in their own right. They are strong in numbers (108 countries, with 75% of the world’s population), or around 30% of world GDP, and boast formidable geographical, economic, sociological and cultural diversity. Furthermore, they possess coherent and homogeneous levels of development, where what unites is far more substantial than what differentiates.
The middle-income countries have the ambition to recapitalize around their assets, to remobilize around their challenges, and above all to be–each in its own region–actors of regional development, and vectors of interregional and international development.
The Conference, organized by the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Development Program, began on Monday to discuss topics such as South-South and triangular cooperation, climate financing, innovative financing sources, and the middle-income trap.
The Ministerial Segment, chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, will focus on the challenges and opportunities confronting MICs, with senior representatives from the United Nations Regional Economic Commissions, including ESCWA Executive Secretary Rola Dashti, ECA Deputy Executive Secretary Hanan Morsy, and UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Pedro Manuel Moreno.