An international seminar on measuring development and how that relates to international cooperation concluded today at ECLAC’s main headquarters in Santiago, Chile.

Authorities and specialists reaffirmed today that the measurement based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is incomplete and that it is necessary to move towards a multidimensional measurement of development, during the closing session of an international seminar held at the main headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile.

The Seminar on the Measurement of Development and its Relationship to International Cooperation brought together authorities from 21 of ECLAC’s member countries, three associate countries and three international organizations, who agreed that it is imperative to leave the concept of graduation behind, since all the countries of the Global South are developing nations that need greater financing and financial inclusion.

At this two-day meeting, participants posed the need to halt the use of per capita income as the criteria for countries’ graduation from Official Development Assistance, stressed the importance of more accessible financing to tackle challenges such as climate change, productive development and inequality reduction, and affirmed that it is necessary to differentiate financing for development from investment projects.

The international seminar concluded with remarks by José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary, who echoed the urgency of moving towards a multidimensional measurement of development and emphasized that “the exclusively monetary metric does not allow for capturing the challenges that countries of the Global South face in reducing social, digital and educational gaps, and aspects of vulnerability, or achieving more productive, inclusive and sustainable development.”

The senior United Nations official underscored that any new development metric must be suited to reflecting the cooperation needs of the entire Global South and must rally broad international agreement. He further stressed that to establish a new metric, it is necessary to rethink the critical dimensions of development and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different methodological strategies.

“ECLAC presented an exercise that illustrates the complexities mentioned. Options were explored for a new development measurement based on an index that includes some of the dimensions identified by the Commission as part of the 11 transformations that we see as vital for Latin America and the Caribbean. Although this was a very preliminary exercise, the results show that it is possible to build a composite index that would capture aspects and dimensions that are not captured well by per capita GDP and would provide a more complete measurement regarding countries’ development,” he stated.

José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs underlined the need to forge a joint political narrative in Latin America and the Caribbean, that would incorporate Africa and Asia, to make concrete progress on multilateral cooperation, and he insisted on the urgency of having solid indicators, valid for all developing countries and arising from consensus.

“This is a complex task that will take time. ECLAC is willing to support you on whatever is needed,” he said.

He added that in the run-up to the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development – which will take place on June 30-July 3, 2025 in Seville, Spain – the region can build conviction and reach a political agreement on the need to develop a new metric, which would be configured as part of a paradigm shift for moving towards a financing for development architecture that is more flexible and would move beyond the concept of graduation criteria and the arbitrary categorization of developing countries. 

The Seminar on the Measurement of Development and its Relationship to International Cooperation consisted of three thematic panel discussions addressing the criteria for development banks to grant concessional loans, the state of the art in development measurements that go beyond GDP, and the need for a new development measurement on the path to Seville and its consequences for international cooperation.