Download a formatted version of the letter here.
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October 21, 2016
Mary Beth Goodman
Senior Director for Development & Democracy
National Security Council
White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Ms. Goodman:
On behalf of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), we are writing to thank you for the recent public announcement of the U.S. baseline figure for tracking its commitment to the Addis Tax Initiative, which calls for a doubling of support for domestic resource mobilization (DRM) by 2020. We are pleased to see the baseline figure of $26 million covers the DRM work of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Department of State, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
By establishing this baseline, the U.S. is sending a clear signal that DRM assistance plays an invaluable role in raising the necessary resources to deal with today’s most pressing development challenges. Official development assistance, while an ever-shrinking portion of overall development finance, is already proving to be an effective catalyst for enabling countries to generate more of their own revenue to spend on development priorities.
Now that the baseline has been established, we are looking forward to seeing more details about how this baseline figure breaks down across the specified agencies. We are also interested to see more information about how individual agencies intend to achieve the 2020 overall commitment through their respective annual policy and budget planning, especially as we look towards Fiscal Year 2018.
We hope that as the U.S. moves forward to meet its commitment, activities will align with MFAN’s guiding principles on DRM, such as: ensuring that resources are allocated in line with partner country priorities; taking a holistic approach to DRM, including building up national government capacity to collect revenues as well as civil society capacity to hold governments accountable; rigorously monitoring and evaluating DRM programs; and making results transparent.
We look forward to continuing to work with you to meet this important commitment.
Sincerely,
George Ingram
MFAN Co-Chair
Brookings Institution
Carolyn Miles
MFAN Co-Chair
Save the Children
Connie Veillette
MFAN Co-Chair
The Lugar Center
Cc: Eric Postel, Associate Administrator for the Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and Environment
Jonathan Lachman, Associate Director for National Security Programs, White House Office of Management and Budget
Alexia Latortue, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Development Policy and Debt, U.S. Treasury
Larry McDonald, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technical Assistance, U.S. Treasury
Beth Tritter, Vice President, Department of Policy and Evaluation, Millennium Challenge Corporation
Daniella Ballou- Aares, Senior Advisor for Development to the U.S. Secretary of State
Hari Sastry, Director, Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources, U.S. Department of State
