 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of you who are joining us. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you and also for joining us for this side event organised by Benin in conjunction with the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. My name is Adam Cotter, Senior Vice President at DZ Bank. I'm joining you from our offices in Singapore. For those of you who aren't too familiar with DZ Bank, we serve as the central institution for all the cooperative and rural and church banks in Germany and DZ Bank recognise at an early stage that the global fixed income market has huge potential for facilitating the transition to a sustainable future and has helped drive the development of a sustainable bond mark since its infancy. To start the event, I'd like to give a quick overview of our key speakers and panellists. So I'm very pleased to have joining us today Hugez Pocosso, General Manager of the Benin Debt Management Office, Yves Delomote Caribou, Head of the Networks Team for SDSN, Professor Alistair Alensato, Chief of Staff of the senior minister in charge of the Development and Coordination of Government Action of Benin, Adijato Hassan Sanuvi, Chief of Staff for the senior minister in charge of Economy and Finance, Yunwen Hernandez-Suno, Deputy Director of ESG Control and Monitoring from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit. They are joining us from Mexico and Cedric Merle, Head of the Centre of Expertise and Innovation and ESG Coverage for SSAs from the Tixis Green and Sustainable Hub. So thank you all for joining us. By way of background, one year ago the Republic of Benin carried out its first international bond issuance, dedicated to financing projects with a high impact on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals for an amount of 500 million euros. With this issue, Benin has made history as the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to carry out such an operation. On the 4th of May, this operation received the Deal of the Year award, which represents the best financial operation of the year by the Financial Times Groups magazine, The Banker. In this momentum of strong commitment to achieve the SDGs, the country has established an innovative partnership with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the SDSN. The SDSN will play an important advisor role for providing observations and recommendations that will not only be taken into account in the design of public policies and action by the Government of Benin, but also share with various stakeholders, including international investors. Today, the first SDSN document on Benin has been produced and will be launched during this side event of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. It is a pilot baseline report on the analysis of policies, progress and trends of the country's SDG indicators. Now, without further ado, I'd like to hand over, I should say, to a presentation on the SDSN report, and that will be delivered by Yves Dalamotte-Caribou, but before we do that, I would like to hand over to Huges Lokusu, who will provide some remarks. On the occasion of the launch of the report on Sustainable Development, I would like to thank the SDSN network for the invitation to participate in this event, so that we can share the experience of Benin in terms of the progress that has been made on the theme of sustainable development objectives. As Adam said, it has been a year, precisely on July 15, 2021, that Benin has made the first robust compulsory effort to help the African continent. And it is at a point of €500 million that is exclusively aimed at financing eligible projects on the agenda of the United Nations Transnation. But is it necessary to recall that since 2016, at least, no new dynamics have been set up in the general public finance governance and in the management of the debt also in particular. And in this case, Benin has made the goals of the 2030 United Nations a priority by linking, in a voluntary way, its matrix of public policy on the EZODD. The projects made are completed in the report that has been exposed in the following minutes. This operation has been the result of a cooperation with this partner, such as UNIMF, for the costing and the United Nations SDSN network, which I would like to thank for the follow-up of the situation of the country regarding the goals, regarding the EZODD. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, I would like to thank the Minister of Finance for the tribune that has been made today for Benin to share his experience. I would like to thank you and I wish all of you a good season. Thank you very much. And now on to the next part of the program. We'll have that presentation of the SDSN report on Benin. And I'd like to hand over to Eve Della-Motte Carubi. Thank you, Adam. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Wherever this may find you, I am currently joining you from New York, where I'm here for the High-Level Political Forum. As Adam introduced me, my name is Eve Della-Motte Carubi. I'm head of the Networks Team and responsible for this cooperation project with Benin at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. For those of you who aren't familiar with the SDSN, we are a unique network established in 2012 under the auspices of the UN Secretary General, but we are an independent organization mobilizing science and research around the world in support of the achievement of sustainable development goals. I'd like to give a little bit of context around this report before we jump into the conclusions. This is part of a family of reports that SDSN has developed and has been publishing since 2018. We have not only our global edition, the 2022 edition of which launched last month, but we also have regional editions for Europe, for Africa, and Latin America, and some other subnational editions which this report for Benin would fall under. This methodology has been refined over the years and audited by the European institution and we use both in this case international data as well as national data for the international domestic level analysis. And you can explore this whole family of reports on our website SDGindex.org. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues who have supported the production of this report, Samore Tourette, who has been the the lead author and researcher, my colleague Grayson Fuller, who helped support the data management as well as Max Gruber, who designed the data visualization which I'll be sharing shortly. And of course our colleagues at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance in Benin, with whom we have worked very closely over the past months to collect data from the national statistical authorities and to collaborate our cooperation across different agencies and ministries to give us the most complete picture as possible for what is what we're calling a pilot report, which is really here to present a baseline situation. Why are we calling this a baseline report in particular? There's two reasons. The first one is that this is the first report that we are preparing for Benin. By nature of the timeline, by nature of the question of data availability, it is a little bit incomplete. But the idea is to give a snapshot of where Benin stands today, where the trends seem to be going, to give some sense of where it stands in the region, and to have a look also within the countries and comparing the departments of Benin between themselves. So without further ado, I will share some of our key findings from this analysis. The first one is that at the halfway point of the SDGs, Benin is halfway to achieving them with an index score of 50.7 out of 100. This is more or less within the sort of regional average. We're comparing Benin to ECOWAS, and most countries in the ECOWAS region have around the same level of halfway achievement to the SDGs. However, Benin does perform better than the rest of the region with particular progress on SDG2, which addresses both hunger and sustainable agriculture on SDG8, which is on decent work and economic growth, SDG9 on industry innovation and infrastructure, and SDG14, which addresses the protection of oceans and sustainable fishing. And on those same SDGs, the region tends to be stagnating, whereas Benin is making moderate progress. Benin also performs relatively well on SDGs12, which is on responsible consumption and production, as well as on SDG13 climate action. And as well as with the entire region, there are some persistent challenges, unfortunately. The trends for SDG4 on quality education, SDG10 on inequalities, and SDG11 on sustainable cities and communities must be monitored and reversed because they are unfortunately heading in the wrong direction, and this is true across the region. Our subnational analysis has revealed some disparities between the regions, with gender being the aspect of disparity that has the least inequality between regions. And then finally, we have a quite a large section of the report, which we devote to analyzing the government action plan, as well as the institutional setup. And Benin has a uniquely strong institutional apparatus and political will. And so even though the results that we're presenting now, in many cases, the data is not from this past year. And it's really there to serve as a baseline analysis. We predict that there will be significant results and progress in the years to come. Just to get a little bit into some more detail of those findings. So here we have a map presenting the index scores of the region. We have unsurprisingly a couple of stronger performers. But as you can see, there's really the majority of the region is all in the same color. And here we again said the SDG index score for Benin is 50.7. You'll see that we, two countries in the region, Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, are not ranked in the index. And that is because of issues of data availability. Just quickly to illustrate some of those trends that I mentioned earlier. Really across the board, we have these straight orange arrows in terms of trends, really for the majority of the goals. So unfortunately, the region as a whole is facing significant challenges. This is something that we all are aware of. But what is worrying is that the trends, and this is our prediction based on past performance projecting forward to 2030 of whether the country and region will actually achieve these goals. And so we do see positive trends on goals 12 and 13, but really stagnation and even decline on SDG 11 on sustainable cities and SDG 16 on peace and security, which again is unsurprising given the region. But of course, the focus here is on Benin. So here you have the overall score as well as this performance by SDG. And I'll also show this same color coding. So we can see here, for example, these yellow arrows showing improvement on SDGs 2, 8, 9 and 14, which contrasted to the rest of the region where there was stagnation. And here even SDGs 12 and 13 are fully green with being on track to achieve those goals. And so we really share a strong positive message here about these trends and encourage the government to continue on that and to also sustain the performance on those goals that are already in green while alerting to some of the challenges facing notably goals for 10 and 11. We also conducted a subnational analysis using national level data. So this is data that was provided to us by the National Statistical Office. And we constructed it into a leave no one behind index. In this analysis, we take four different dimensions of inequalities on the leave no one behind theme. The first one is inequalities in access to public services. So this includes access to education and healthcare. The second one on extreme poverty and material deprivation, which includes, of course, measures of extreme poverty, but also, for example, metrics on slum dwelling on gender inequality, which I previously mentioned was the dimension across which there was actually the least inequality between the departments up and in and finally income and wealth inequalities. I would invite you to explore this data and have a look for yourself on our interactive website. You can see the link on the top of your screen there in yellow. Here is just a static screenshot of what the interactive website looks like. So you can click on one of those four dimensions and see the scores laid out across the country. On the left hand side, you can see all of the indicators that make up this index and by clicking on the individual indicators, you can see the scores and performance across each region. So that concludes the first part of the report. The second part of the report, we take our six transformations framework, which you see presented here. The 17 STGs that we all know very well are not necessarily an operational framework. And so in 2019, SDSN published the six transformations framework, which are essentially these transformation pillars that allow governments to do policy planning and also coordinate in a way that makes sense to how the economy, industry, and government itself is organized. But these six transformations correspond much better to sectors of the economy and existing ministries and portfolios. And so using this six transformation framework, we analyzed Benin's government action program, which is the most recent edition of which goes from 2021 to 2026. And here you will see based on our analysis of the seven strategic axes of the government's action plan. And on the right hand side, the six transformations of SDSN, how they actually sort of flow into each other and relate to each other. And also using some of the regional level data to sort of reality check this government action plan to see if it is sufficiently ambitious and complete to address all of these challenges. And the overarching conclusion is that, yes, this government action program, which will be, which is already in place and will be the guiding strategy for the next number of years, really does fit very well into our framework and does very coherently target and address the challenges to achieve the SDGs. We have also analyzed, as I said at the beginning, the institutional framework. And this is from actually the Global Sustainable Development Report, as I mentioned, which was launched last month. In that report, we launched for the first time a sort of pilot index of countries based on their level of SDG commitment. And you can see Benin circled here. It's really worth noting that Benin is one of the only countries of its economic category in the high SDG commitment. Most of the other countries here are G20 countries. And here you can see, again, Benin really being an outlier in terms of engagement, despite being a country that is still on a development pathway, it really has very strong engagement and efforts in terms of domesticating the SDGs, developing strategies, integrating it into policy planning and budgeting across all of these different parameters of our analysis. I'm going to wrap up here. I would invite you all to read the report. It is in French. We do have an executive summary available in English, and we are working on also preparing a fully English version of the report. But if you visit benin.sdgindex.org, you can access all the different parts of the report. You can download the whole PDF, look at the individual chapters. So if you're particularly interested, for example, on this government efforts aspect, you can just download that chapter. You have the interactive map, which will allow you to explore the data for the infra national leave no one behind index, as well as download a lot of the different supporting materials. If you're interested to learn about our methodology or look into some of the specifics around the data that we have used for the report. Thank you all for your kind attention, and I give the floor back to you, Adam. Thank you very much. A fascinating presentation, and I encourage you all to find that document if you can, and even the executive summary of English as well, which I found very helpful. So we're going to continue the presentation, well, sorry, the agenda as well. We're going to go on to a bit of a panel discussion now on advancing the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. So we have those speakers I mentioned earlier joining us. Perhaps what I'd like to do is ask each speaker in order to introduce themselves a bit further as well, and also offer some initial thoughts on this topic. I'll be very pleased to start with Professor Alastair Alincento, and over to you. Thank you, Adam. Thank you for having me here. I'll shift in front. So I'm Alastair Alincento, the Cabinet Director of the State and Development of the National Governmental Coordination Committee. I would like to thank all the organizers of this event, especially the SDESN network, for all the support and support from the Government of Béné to be here today. I would also like to thank all the members of the panel who were able to put their time aside and participate in this event. So on the experience of Béné, it is important to say that we have had some coincidences that were at our disposal until the adoption of the SDESN in September 2015. Béné was in place at a new government in April 2016. The government was coming with a lot of ambitions, a lot of commitment, and one of the first, let's say, in the United States, it was to give the country a kind of programming of development correspondingly and especially aligned on the SDESN. And from that moment, the development ministry, in relation to all the other ministers, had the task of working on the prioritization of the SDESN. As you know, we have a sense of it on the 17 important objectives in terms of determining the SDESN that was priority for Béné. This is the exercise that took about six months and that mobilized around the table all the relevant actors, also from the public sector, from the private sector, from the civil society, from the world, from the university, from the religious, from the NGOs, and without forgetting our development partners who were around the table for about six months, in order to identify the goals of the SDESN that were the priority priorities. This means that after the exercise, we have arrived at a 40% priority, 40% priority, without considering, of course, the goals of the SDESN and the goals of the SDESN that are essentially the goals of the SDESN. In the south of this exercise of prioritization, we have proceeded, therefore, to the alignment of an entire network of programming and development of the country that understood a certain number of documents. In the major documents, was the National Development Plan, the action program of the government, 2017, 2021, now, 2021, 2026, and the whole document of strategies for development of different sectors. After this exercise, the next step for us I am the one of the domestication, especially the indicators. It was important for us, let's say, for the government, to know exactly, appreciate the projects that we do as we go along with our development program and the action program of the government. This is why we have also done an exercise at the level of our statistics. And we must say that this exercise remains still today a work in progress, since it implies deep reforms at the level of all the national statistics systems. Finally, we have come to distinguish three categories of indicators. The indicators that we have today the means to calculate and to choose the results. This is the first category, which is around a third of all the indicators that we have obtained. A dozen categories of indicators, we know how to calculate them. We have the expertise for the price, but we need resources, let's say, marginal to activate these capacities that we have. And we have a last category of indicators that on which we have not really the skills and for which the capacity reinforcement was necessary. As I said, all this work remains still today a work in progress. There are some important projects that have been implemented. We have seen a few weeks ago the adoption of the law on statistics, and it is said that this reform has evolved relatively well. After the stage of the domestication of the indicators, we have continued to analyze them a little further in order to identify the priority targets by quality. We have at least 60% of these targets which have local applications. So it was important to see to the benefit of the 77 communes, what are the priorities of retracing development in the non-communist part of the country. So we have developed a form of localization. We also wanted to spacialize the ODB in order to strengthen the appropriation of the ODB. I would like to say that the benefit, in the representation that I have of you, is that the benefit is part of the countries that are most engaged in the ODB. And this, indeed, will be shown through a kind of activity that is practically daily on the ground. So after the spacialization of the ODB, which allowed us to strengthen the local population of the ODB, we are now at the stage of the COST-SIM. The stage of the COST-SIM, also I would like to say that it will cost me a lot of targets, especially the population without the targets that are retained. The population without the yellows that we have retained, that is, in 20 to 25 years, in 20 to 30 years, we should have the ODB. So how much are the targets? This is the COST-SIM exercise for which we have received support in terms of assistive techniques, support from our partners, particularly from the HMI and from the community through the despotism that is found in Alissa Viva, which have helped us to do what we call the quality assurance of this COST-SIM. In the end, we have reached about $614 billion, which is what we need in terms of investment or until the ODB. And this exercise also helps us to identify the cases that we will need to mobilize, resources that we will need to mobilize in order to ensure that we have what we need to finance this march towards the ODB. And it has been an exercise that has allowed us, at the same time, to put in place a panel of projects that are immediately deployable and that are ready to be implemented for the essential studies that are hot, so that, justement, that once the level of finance is achieved, that of this panel of projects, in order to ensure that we have their financing. So, overall, this exercise of preparation for the benefit, of appropriation of the benefits of food, of the benefits of the ODB has allowed us to give our country a national document, a policy, a strategy, a project that brings us together with now the implication of this number of actors, to be able to, justement, align the underings of this number of financing, of financing that we sell to those, justement, who advise us today. Here we are, Adam, very quickly, the major stage of the course of the benefit, of the experience of the benefit that I would like to share in the introduction of this panel. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Sartou. I have just one quick question following on from that. What is the status of the process and of the path taken by Benin in the implementation of the SDGs? Sorry, yeah. What is the status of the process but also of the path taken by Benin in the implementation of the SDGs? In addition to these aspects that I have just mentioned, Benin is in place an institutional framework that goes back to the community of orientation that brings together all the ministers of the government, a framework, a technical level where a general direction of the coordination of the ODB is found, and in the essential goal is to ensure, indeed, that all of our policies, the day after the day, are aligned and that the follow-up devices, of course, are supported by the National Institution of Demography, the statistics of demography, that all of these projects work in a current way in order to give the means to the government to follow up practically on a daily basis with the evolution of the country on the ODB scale. So today, we have in place the institutional framework that is needed to conduct, let's say, the ODB scale. We have the whole framework of development programming that is aligned on the ODB and we have the general project of the state, as well as the whole of the different project areas that are aligned on the ODB scale. The most comprehensive task and the most important today is the daily follow-up of the implementation of the whole of these devices in order to ensure that, indeed, we do not have to say anything and that we are following the process to convey together this institutional framework and its programming documents. Thank you very much, Professor. Now, moving on, I'd like to bring in our next speaker, that's Adijatu Hassan Zanouvi. Mrs. Zanouvi is the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Senior Minister in charge of the economy and finance. And over to you, Mrs. Zanouvi. Good morning or good afternoon all, depending on where you are. So I will switch in French. Bonjour à tous. Donc, comme le disait Adon tout à l'heure, thank you for the introduction. Je suis Adijatu Hassan Zanouvi, la Directrice Adjointe du Cabinet, du ministre de l'Economie et des Finances, ministre d'État. En charge de la mobilisation, je suis en charge de la mobilisation des ressources et notamment des financements internationaux et du financement, du financement climat et du financement du développement. Voilà. Donc, en termes de présentation, je remercie les intervenants préliminaires. Merci, Ève, pour la présentation. Nous voyons au travers ce rapport qui est lancé aujourd'hui par Le Benin. Pour ce qui concerne l'attente des objectifs de développement durable. Hello, Adam. Hello, sorry, Zanouvi, sorry. I couldn't hear you for a bit now. So, one question I do is, prior to the inaugural issue, Benin launched an initiative partnership with the SDSN. And how has this helped you and how did investors react to your inaugural issuance? Okay. Thank you for the question, Adam. D'abord, c'est vrai qu'il faut souligner que le réseau des solutions pour le développement durable, donc SDSN, travaille sur le secrétariat général des Nations Unies depuis 2012. Ceci a été un élément essentiel qui a motivé ce partenariat. L'approche de SDSN vise à accélérer l'apprentissage, partager, promouvoir, comme on l'a vu dans le rapport, des méthodes intégrées qui répondent aux défis économiques, sociaux et environnementaux auxquels notre monde est confronté aujourd'hui. Ce partenariat innovant qui est le premier de ce type conclu dans un pays d'Afrique avec SDSN s'inscrit dans la continuité des engagements pris depuis 2016, comme je le disais par le Bénin, pour l'atteinte des ODD. Nos engagements en faveur des ODD ont valu au Bénin d'être retenus en 2018 pour participer à l'initiative conjointe du FMI et de l'ONU pour le financement des programmes de développement et l'atteinte des objectifs de développement durable aux côtés de quatre autres pays à travers le monde. Enfin, dans cette dynamique dans laquelle s'inscrit le Bénin, on met l'attente des objectifs de développement durable au coeur de la politique économique du pays. À travers ce partenariat lié au suivi à l'évaluation des progrès et des efforts réalisés par le gouvernement béninois, l'analyse, comme on l'a vu des politiques publiques, SDSN joue un rôle consultatif important auprès des autorités béninoises. Toutes ces observations et recommandations ont vocation à être prises en compte dans la conception des politiques publiques et de l'action du gouvernement, comme l'a présenté tout à l'heure M. Alice Sainto Alastair et y compris notamment dans nos programmes de financement. En août, l'un des volets importants de ce partenariat est la mise en place d'un réseau SDSN au Bénin pour une participation plus large des universitaires et chercheurs du Bénin. Vous comprenez donc que ce partenariat est très utile pour le Bénin. Pour ce qui est de la deuxième question de dire comment les investisseurs ont accueilli notre émission inaugurale, je vais dire que les mesures prises préalablement avec tous les ministères, car c'était un travail conjoint et interministériel, en particulier en ce qui concerne l'analyse du budget par rapport aux cibles ODD sélectionnés. On l'a écouté tout à l'heure. Cela fait partie de tout un processus qui a commencé en 2016 et qui a continué dans notamment la structuration même de notre programme d'action du gouvernement. Ces actions nous ont placé dans une position vraiment confortable et crédible vis-à-vis des investisseurs qui ont accueilli de manière très favorable cette émission inaugurale au regard du niveau de souscription que nous avons eu qui était trois fois au-dessus de la demande initiale. Ce dispositif montrait bien que nous sommes en mesure de leur offrir une plus grande transparence sur l'utilisation des fonds qui seront levés. Il faut également souligner que cette opération préliminaire a été réalisée en collaboration avec eux afin que les critères d'éligibilité, donc avec les investisseurs, a fait que les critères d'éligibilité et les autres exigences soient examinés ensemble. Tout ceci a été un atout pour nous lors du roadshow que nous avons organisé afin de préparer les investisseurs à cette émission inaugurale. Comme vous l'avez dit dans l'introduction qui était une première en Afrique. Voilà ce que je peux dire par rapport à ces deux questions que vous avez soulignées. Thank you very much. It's always a challenge. Managing the demands of investors but you've certainly done a very good job in this instance. I was wondering if you could also share some of Benin's experience with this issuance basically in terms of any great challenges you found with it or lessons to be learnt. And could this perhaps be a model for other countries within sub-Saharan Africa? Okay. Parlant de l'expérience et de la pratique du Benin, il faut à mon avis retenir trois, quatre ou cinq aspects important. D'abord, on l'a vu tout au long des exposés qui ont été faits, il faut un engagement politique. Si on doit partager notre expérience, on commencera par cela. Il faut d'abord l'engagement politique. Dès 2016, comme on l'a dit, la nouvelle dynamique de la gouvernance dont je parlais a été mise en place plaçant l'atteinte de l'agenda 2030 des Nations Unies au corps de la politique économique du Benin. Les défis pour nous étaient de trouver des solutions innovantes de financement de l'économie, notamment les marchés internationaux de capitaux. Nous avons donc fait l'option d'effectuer cette émission de Robonde ODD qui est un produit d'investissement à forte dimension d'impact innovant en Afrique et qui intéresse les investisseurs. Ceci permet d'assurer le financement des projets à forte sensibilité ODD du programme d'action du gouvernement. Ensuite, il y a eu quelques dispositions préalables pour l'émission que j'aimerais partager. La première chose a été l'élaboration d'un document cadre de l'émission obligataire dont la contribution à la durabilité a été valuée comme avancée par Moody's VE. Obtenant ainsi le score le plus élevé possible et correspondant aux meilleures pratiques du marché. Par la suite, il y a eu la sélection provisoire des projets sectoriels éligibles sur la base des cibles prioritaires ODD. Et c'est pour ça que le point que je mentionnais plus tôt, de dire il faut une coordination et une cohérence entre les différents ministères qu'à choisir les projets éligibles étant des aspects, je dirais, les plus challengeants dans ce processus-là. Et ensuite, la bonne gouvernance en prenant en compte toutes les exclusions thématiques et sectorielles. Pour les restes, c'est l'organisation du roadshow que nous avons fait pour présenter aux investisseurs avec bien sûr la plus de nos bons conseils. Le troisième point que j'aimerais partager en expérience qui est un point important portent sur les engagements privés à vie des investisseurs. La production annuelle de deux rapports, un rapport d'allocation, audité par un cabinet indépendant, et un rapport d'impact qui lui a été soumis à l'examen par les structures nationales de production des indicateurs de référence, ainsi que les organes administratifs de contrôle interne. Et enfin, le dernier point mais non moins le plus important, la gouvernance mise en place pour le suivi des obligations ODD. Nous avons un comité de pilotage présidé par le ministre d'Etat, le ministre de l'Economie et des Finances, qui assure la validation de la conformité de l'éligibilité des projets, des actifs et des dépenses retenues, l'évaluation et la sélection des dépenses éligibles ainsi que l'allocation analytique de tous les fonds levés. Il a été aussi créé une cellule rattachée au ministre de l'Economie et des Finances, qui assure le secretariat permanent technique du comité de pilotage ainsi que la préparation des différents documents livrables attendus. Également, la mise en place d'un site internet odd.gov.bj dédié aux obligations ODD pour faciliter l'accès des investisseurs aux données, informations indicateurs, diverses et visuelles relatifs aux projets et populations bénéficiaires impactées. On voit donc que la transparence dans la communication d'information dans le suivi sont des éléments clés quand on émet une obligation avec un engagement fort dans l'utilisation des fonds. Pour finir, il y a bien évidemment le partenariat avec SDSM, créant un contenu unique pour alimenter les rapports d'impact et également l'extension du di-réseau au Béna. Voilà dans les quatre points majeurs de notre expérience que je souhaite partager avec les autres pays qui se lanceraient dans cette aventure d'une émission ODD pour financer leur programme de développement national. Great. Thank you, Mrs. Zonuvie. I think that's great. We can take away four pillars and use that around the region to help other countries who are embarking on this journey as well. Now, talking about other countries, I think it's a time just to move away from Benin and also Africa for a moment. I'd like to bring in our next speaker, Ms. Yunen Hernandez-Zunou who is joining us from the Mexican Ministry of Finance and Public Debt. Hello, Yunen. Thank you for joining us. Hi, bonjour. Here in Mexico, I'm here in Benin. On behalf of the Ministry of Finance in Mexico, I want to thank the Minister of Economy and Finance of Benin for the invitation to participate in this panel. We consider this to be a great opportunity to discuss our experience on developing these kind of instruments, the SDG bonds, and also to share our best practices on our first reporting. But first, I would like to greet my co-panelist, Professor Alistair Alinsato, Adi Jatou Hassan-Zanovi, Cedric Merle also, and last but not least, also to greet Adam Carter. Thank you for moderating this panel. As we all know, Mexico was the first ever issue of the SDG sovereign bond with its inaugural issuance focused on socially impactful SDGs. I would like to start my participation by addressing why the contribution to SDGs it is important to the government of Mexico. This process was mainly borne from the commitment that Mexico has acquired to encourage sustainable development and inclusive growth. The main priority is to reduce social and environmental gaps by promoting well-being in country, especially within the most vulnerable population, no, like not leaving anyone behind at the same message Benin just mentioned before. This allows to return Mexico's commitment to the continuity of the 2030 agenda through the creation of these solid governance for the planning and also monitoring of the SDGs. Furthermore, the bond complies with the public policy objectives of promoting sustainable financing. Besides, it has become a tool to develop the capital markets providing these thematic instruments, no, talking about green social and or sustainable bonds. And this to be like a solid foundation like our SDGs sovereign bond framework. We also aim to offer investors a higher transparency in public spending and a better monitoring for the fulfillment of these SDGs goals. Going forward, we recognize that the path of the Mexican economy will depend mainly on the consequences of the pandemic and the fact that the ongoing public health crisis will continue to wait on economic activity, employment, inflation, and other macro variables and important indicators here in the short and medium term. Hence, this type of instruments also represents a great opportunity for the federal government to bank on innovative and effective financial instruments. We have shown great efficiency and appeal, especially during periods of high uncertainty and volatile conditions. On the other hand, we want to confirm Mexico's leading role as Latin American and emerging market sovereign issuer and plays a country at the forefront of the innovation of sustainable financing. And the Mexico's SDG sovereign bond framework leverages the work that the country has undergone for the last four years when it started to link the federal budget to the SDGs since 2018, to be precise. The framework is designed to be aligned with the Green and Social Bond Guidelines of 2021 edition published by the International Capital Markets Association and also designed to be in line with the spirit of the European Green Bond Standards. Moreover, it provides the flexibility to allow us to issue other social greener sustainable bonds. This is because our framework encompasses 11 out of 17 SDGs. The reason why it's only these 11 SDGs is because Mexico finds that these SDGs are the ones which we can achieve more tangible results. The remaining six SDGs are being addressed in a more transversal way in our reports. And the selection process of eligible expenditure, as Ms. Adigio too said, it's a challenge when we want to put it on our framework. And this is a process that we do it annually since our national budget is approved by our Congress each year. And from that, we have six additional filters established on our framework. And only we have a seventh filter for those who are related to our social SDGs which is our geospatial criteria. And from this, we have our pool of eligible expenditures linked to the SDGs that contribute to at least one direct contribution that has at least one direct contribution to the SDGs. In contrast with Benin's framework in which their eligible expenditures are classified according to the four pillars of Benin's National Development Plan which is population prosperity planning and partnerships. Mexico has a use of perceived categories grouped according to the SDG targets in which the eligible expenditures are linked to the federal budget. As it is required for these type of issuances, Mexico designated visual areas now Moody's ESG solutions as an SPO provider. This is an SPO that is updated annually according to our eligible expenditures. And this also ensures our alignment of the framework with the SDGs and the international practices that are established by IGMA. And this happens to be the same SPO provider also for Benin's framework. In the spirit of transparency, the Mexican government assigned a memorandum of understanding with UNDP to provide an opinion of our framework on its alignment to the SDGs also to act as an observer during the process of the selection of eligible expenditure and to provide technical assistance on the development of the impact report. Similar case with Benin's SDG bond having with Sustainable Development Solutions Network as a partnership to provide observations and recommendations on the reporting. With this framework, the Mexican government was ready and able to initiate the process towards its first SDG bond issuance. And the first SDG bond, as we may know, was issued for 750 million euros in September of 2020. And from Mexico's experience, we have seen that other sovereign issuance are keen to go to the capital markets with these thematic bonds, such as the Benin Republic with an SDG bond on July 2021 with an issued amount of 500 million euros similar to the SDG bonds Mexico has issued. Further mark the first SDG bond of Mexico allowed us to expand our investors base by accessing the international funds committed to sustainable economic development. Roughly the 44% of the offering from the first SDG bond was allocated to 78 new ESG-focused accounts allowing Mexicas to continue expanding the country's investors base. And very from this transaction, during 2021 we issued our second SDG bond for an amount of 1,250 million euros and also we published our first allocation and impact report which represented an unprecedented challenge for UMS since there was a need to compile all the public and granular information we got in order to present them in this report. And we think that promote transparency to investors regarding the first made unsustainable policy in Mexico is important. And the following step for our upcoming report is to provide consistency and continuity in the sustainable agenda which our federal budget has shown since our 2021 2020 issuance which is a good sign of continuity. Additionally, I would like to mention that Mexico continues to expand its sustainable yield curve to other currencies both in the external and local markets. And nowadays Mexico has issued another year sorry in 2022 at the beginning of 2022 Mexico issued the first local SDG bond for an amount of 1 billion in two tranches, two and six years. And so these we are currently looking forward to keep strengthening the local curve. In order for the other issuers both private and public to have different references and better price discovery process also with these thematic bonds. And I would like to end my participation with a message to all my colleagues. It is important to speed up sustainable financing to project with positive and social impact and also to provide the best transparency as possible in order to avoid green or social washing. And this must be encouraged by both private and public sector and we got to work together to face climate change and social hazards in a timely manner. Thank you. Thank you and that's very comprehensive and I don't think I have any questions because you answered them all in your presentation but I think it's a very good move yes but you're supporting also the local currency markets and developing the local bond market with the local currency issuance and that's a very positive move that I think other countries can follow when the time is right as well. We are coming up to the end of the session but we can't finish yet we still have one more speaker to come. We have Cedric Merle. Cedric as I introduced before is the head of the Center for Expertise and Innovation and ESG Coverage for Sub-Saharan Africa at Natixis Green and Sustainable Hub. We're very pleased to have Cedric join us because he is familiar with both the situations or the models in Benin and Mexico and Natixis helped prepare those frameworks and issuances. So Cedric with time in mind my question to you really will be more about the development of the green social and sustainable bond market and the innovative financing solutions that are being developed or have been developed for countries to implement their policies. Perhaps you could reference both Benin and Mexico in your answer. Yes sure thank you and thank you to them and thank you to all the panelists. So what is very interesting in the in the two cases Benin and Mexico is that they bring they brought they bring and they commit to bring in the future additional features because when we're talking about markets market growth the buzzword is always standardization and I agree that it's important but in the meantime we also need some innovation and Taylor made a purchase and we've tried blazers and like like those two countries they're creating and they're dipping and they're bringing new features that really helps enhancing dialogue with investors and very often we hear from portfolio managers that they complain about sovereign seeing engagement is challenging and I do believe that the bond as Mexico and Benin did really help facilitating this dialogue. So what and what those the report from the SDSN bring is an informed analysis about the distance to which the country the distance towards the goal and it really helps giving a sense of prioritizations that's very key countries have different situations we all know they are committed to the same objectives international objectives but we need a bit of tailor meditations a bit of customized analysis to reflect the context and the conflict is not always national it's also subnational and in these two examples they they are providing data at subnational level that really allows you to identify the areas that are the most in need so that's probably I would say a smart use of the SDGs not using them as a as a as a list of themes but really as time bound objectives and creating accountability where do I stand what I am doing how much I spent what are the other institutional aspects to meet those targets and in a dynamic approach and some finance must be most encoded into territories and less static so looking of course at past performances current ones but also near and long-term objectives and that I think is really helpful and it could really strengthen the market prevent SDGs or greenwashing risks and what is also important as we are seeing in the the CREM-Mohm sustainable market that investors are increasingly looking at the schemes the institutional engineering the reforms that help achieving the goals not only how much is spent the user proceeds the amount but also the overall consistency of the country in terms of strategy inter ministerial coordination and that is very very helpful and it gives a better picture overview of the country performance and the effort that are that are being made and I think based on the report base it's not only about disclosure because new data new informations new analysis are being designed it really helps stakeholders to put things in perspective to draw comparisons within the countries between countries and also to help opining on the targets are the ambitious are the demanding are we on track to achieve them what can be enhanced and that could help having a feedback clubs between issuers their private investors but also donors and other stakeholders also identifying the areas where there is a need for technical assistance so we have a comprehensive loop looking at different funding channels concessional ones more market ones based on their independent data and the diagnosis of the of the situations and I think that's really something that must be that must be praised and encouraged to have such such a scheme such a governance and it's also a matter of course of transparency but also a new governance so for system finance especially for certain countries for emerging countries there is there is something around the the involvement of acknowledged stakeholders and again building these loops based on data adjusting identifying the areas where needs are updating the costing analysis and reporting of course reporting on a regular basis I think that these are very very promising items thank you Sergio I know there's a lot to digest there and we could keep on talking but we have gone over time already as I mentioned earlier I do recommend all of you to follow those links just to see the report itself but also the executive summaries if you are short on time but with that I would like to thank the organizers for this program both from the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Benin but also from the UN the SDSN and also for our speakers from the debt management agency the other Benin government authorities involved our Mexican colleague Yuan from the Mexican Public Credit and Finance Ministry and of course Cedric from the Tixas but with that in mind thank you all for listening taking the time to join us and I will bid you farewell thank you very much thank you thank you Adam thank you Adam goodbye