At the INFF Facility: Country-led dialogue on the sidelines of the 2026 FFD Forum, held on 20 April 2026 at UNHQ, Perla Noemi Soto Veloz, Head of the Department of Strategic Analysis and Foresight, Ministry of Finance and Economy, Dominican Republic, shared how the country is using its Integrated National Financing Framework to move from a strong national development vision to concrete financing action.
The speech highlights how the Dominican Republic’s 2030 National Development Strategy provided a strong planning foundation, but needed clearer financing guidelines to deliver its goals.
Through government leadership and technical support from UNDP, UN DESA, ECLAC and UNICEF, the country has developed a first draft of its INFF, a catalogue of 23 alternative financing mechanisms and tools to strengthen SDG alignment, including AI-supported SDG budget tagging.
The intervention underlines three key lessons: INFFs work best when anchored in long-term national planning, government ownership is essential and quick wins can help build political support and institutional buy-in.
You can find the full script below:
Thank you very much, Madam Moderator.
I will switch to Spanish for my presentation.
Distinguished delegates, it is an honour for us, the Dominican Republic, to be part of this forum and to share our experience during the implementation period of our Integrated National Financing Framework.
In a challenging global financial context, and following the Sevilla Commitment, I think we are all facing a common challenge: how to translate the actions mentioned in the agreement into concrete action.
The Dominican Republic, to a certain extent, was part of the discussion process around the Sevilla Commitment, and this has allowed us to take a step forward. We now have our first draft of the Integrated National Financing Framework.
The process of implementing the INFF was based on our National Development Strategy 2030. This is a pioneering instrument, if I may call it that, because it was approved as law in 2012, three years before the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. Its structure is organized around four areas of development: social, economic, environmental and institutional. It includes 19 general goals and many targets within them.
During the implementation period of our national plan, we saw that, despite the robust nature of the instrument in terms of its goals, what was still lacking were the financial guidelines needed to ensure that those goals and targets could be achieved by 2030.
In the first years of implementation, we also saw that this depended heavily on state resources and government resources, as well as the implementation of a number of non-governmental initiatives that were not necessarily fully aligned with the National Development Strategy we have between now and 2030.
So the INFF has been a tool to help us with national financing and to provide a more updated vision of how we can face our development challenges, updating our national agenda.
The Government of the Dominican Republic also has the ambition to double its financing by 2036. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Economy, and with technical assistance from UNDP, UN DESA and ECLAC, the process of developing our INFF has become a useful tool that has made it possible for us to implement a number of programmes.
Among them, I would like to highlight what the moderator referred to: the implementation of the political priorities agenda. That is one good example.
Another example is our diagnosis of what development cooperation should be, and our strategic vision for it. We also have a catalogue identifying 23 alternative forms of financing. Added to that are a number of activities that make up the financing strategy for development in the Dominican Republic.
Based on our experience, we have learned a number of lessons that I wanted to share with you here.
First, the implementation of the INFF works well when it is part of a solid institutional framework, with existing planning and a long-term vision. This is very important for the implementation process of the INFF.
Second, government leadership and government ownership throughout the implementation process are key.
Third, and just as important, it is necessary to have tools that can deliver quick wins during the process. For example, the implementation of political priorities can act as a catalyst for political support and institutional ownership.
Covering the technical aspects of the process is also very important.
There are also issues we are facing at the moment. As we said, we now have the first draft of the implementation, and that is enabling us to have not only a diagnosis of development financing in the Dominican Republic, but also a clearer understanding of how we can make this a reality through action.
I would like to highlight that building the strategy was a very ambitious project. From the first moment we began this work, we wanted to have a comprehensive project. We did not want financing for only one sector. We wanted the strategy to reflect our entire National Development Strategy.
This really does reflect the Sevilla Commitment. The scope covers public, private and international sources, as well as all the international priority issues for our country.
Within that, we have not only identified additional sources of financing. We also have a diagnosis of the structural bottlenecks that are preventing financing from reaching national development priorities.
We do not only have recommendations for identifying resources. We are also carrying out structural reforms that are very important in order to correctly channel development financing, including by looking at new sources of funding.
We also have a separate chapter dedicated to the institutions needed for the programme, including public-private partnerships and international cooperation standing committees.
What we are trying to achieve is to ensure that the financing strategy becomes part of the update of our post-2030 strategy and that it is anchored in law, as our National Development Strategy is.
All of this progress, however, did not happen on its own. It has been supported by the United Nations system, including UNDP, UNICEF and UN DESA.
I would like to highlight that, based on what we have been doing up to now, we have made significant progress, particularly with regard to SDG tagging.
We have also had joint SDG financing work with UN DESA. We have been able to develop a language model so that we can automate the system of SDG tagging.
By the end of this year, I think the Dominican Republic will also become a pioneer in using artificial intelligence for multi-sectoral SDG tagging.
Climate change and gender diversity are also important aspects that we are covering. This will help us not only to align with the SDGs, but also with our national sectoral development plans and other global commitments.
This process will also help with South-South cooperation. We will be able to share this experience with our regional and global peers.
Having said that, I would like to highlight again the central role of government leadership. As I mentioned, the INFF implementation process was approached in a very deliberate manner within the government. This was thanks to the technical support that we received through UN DESA’s Financing for SIDS initiative, where an expert consultant was able to assist our Ministry of Economy.
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