Launch: SG's Report on the Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs

The unprecedented social and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the role of digital finance in providing relief for millions around the world, supporting businesses and protecting jobs and livelihoods. The report, “People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future”, highlights how billions of people around the world are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic using digital tools to work, spend and socialize. It argues there is an historic opportunity to harness digitalization in placing citizens, the ultimate owners of the world's financial resources, in control of finance to ensure that it meets their needs, today and in the future. The report identifies key opportunities going forward to use digital finance as a critical building block for sustainable development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United Nations Secretary-General's Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is mandated to identify how digitalization will reshape finance and to identify, theorize, and propose how best this can support the financing of the SDGs. This requires considering the broader context of finance, technology, and the SDGs, and then narrowing to those areas of SDG financing that are changing due to digitalization.