Jeddah, (IINA) : The United Nations and the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB) plan to focus on scaling-up ongoing initiatives and exploring new opportunities to collaborate on global, regional, and country levels for the effective realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This was the focus of a meeting held on Wednesday between Deputy Secretary General of the UN Amina Mohammed and President of the IDB Group Dr. Bandar Hajjar, held at IDB Group headquarters.

Priority areas for strengthened cooperation between the UN and the IDB Group include project development and implementation around shared priority areas and comparative advantages, development of private sector partnerships, advancing the Global Islamic Impact Investing Platform for blending Islamic Financing and Private Sector resources, aligning key IDB Group Member Country Partnership Strategies to relevant SDGs, and promoting systematic institutional cooperation.

Cooperation will also be expanded beyond the Arab countries, to include Africa, Europe and the Commonwealth of the Independent States and Asia.

Ms. Amina pointed out that the visit to IDB Group headquarters is an opportunity to “start a new era for partnership. We need to have an interactive partnership with strong governments and have results at the country level.”

The deputy secretary general elaborated further saying there are many instruments available for development, but we need to change the way we do business. Each country has to have a response to its challenges, and financing is a challenge and there are untapped resources around.

The IDB Group President emphasized that the “IDB Group is fully committed to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as all of our 57 member countries have signed on the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development in September of 2015.”

“The visit of the UN deputy secretary general is a unique opportunity to strengthen cooperation with the UN for the benefit of IDB Group member countries. The visit also coincides with the reforms I initiated since assuming office, where IDB Group is being transformed from a development bank to a bank of development and developers. This initiative, which is drawn from the Bank’s 10-Year Strategic Framework, is aligned with a number of the initiatives outlined in the SDGs.” Dr. Hajjar added.

At the end of the visit, Ms. Amina and her accompanying delegation held bilateral talks with IDB group Community of Practice on SDGs and addressed a Town Hall Meeting and Q&A session with IDB Group staff.