Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Sweden’s domestic resource mobilisation constitutes the financial foundation of the Swedish model and a modern welfare State with openness to and cooperation with the outside world. The tax ratio, that is mandatory taxes and social security contributions in relation to GDP at current prices, was 43 per cent in 2015. The tax ratio has varied between 42 and 46 per cent since 2006. Central government expenditure as a proportion of domestic taxes amounted to 90 per cent in 2015.
Sweden has long had an effective national system for collecting statistics in many areas, in accordance with international principles. The vast majority of indicators are also produced as part of the official statistics and should then be consistent with the fundamental principles of official statistics. Sweden performed its latest population and housing census in 2014.
Sweden faces several challenges in the area. The most important one is to be able to consistently and tangibly realise policy coherence in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and to constructively contribute to this globally as well.
Since 1975, Sweden’s development cooperation and humanitarian aid has met or exceeded 0.7 per cent of annual GNI. Sweden’s own aid goal is 1 per cent of GNI. Since 2006, development cooperation and humanitarian aid has amounted to about 1 per cent of GNI. According to OECD statistics, Sweden’s aid to the least developed countries amounted to 0.29 per cent of GNI in 2015. Of the total Swedish development cooperation in 2015, just over SEK 2 billion went to financial and technical support for developing countries. In the same year, support for capacity building in the area of statistics amounted to approximately SEK 113 million.
Sweden’s Policy for Global Development from 2003 was an early expression of Sweden’s view that there is a need for coherence between policy areas and different measures in order to contribute to sustainable development, both at home and internationally. The relaunch of the Policy for Global Development in 2014 means that Sweden has a mechanism in place to strengthen policy coherence for sustainable development in accordance with the 2030 Agenda and the global goals.
Sweden sees the Addis Ababa Action Agenda as an integrated, tangible and operationally focused framework that links directly to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the necessity of further developing global partnerships in many areas. The aim of these partnerships includes mobilising financial resources and providing access to technology. Sweden compiled an extensive report, Towards Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. Report on the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development for the international forum on financing for development in New York in May 2017.
Coherence for an equitable and sustainable development must permeate all policy areas and dimensions of the work – horizontally between policy areas and vertically from the local level to the regional, national and global levels, and from goal to implementation. The goal of the work with the EU’s common trade policy is to contribute to sustainable growth and employment in Sweden, in the EU and globally. Sweden works for an open and equitable global trade that contributes to sustainable development. The multilateral system remains one of the foundations of EU trade policy, of which Sweden is a part.
Sweden contributes to increasing the exports of the least developed countries (Target 17.11), in part through the national contact point Open Trade Gate Sweden (OTGS). OTGS provides exporters from developing countries with information free of charge on rules and requirements for exports to Sweden and the EU. They can also turn to OTGS in order to resolve problems related to trade policy regulations.
As a member of the EU’s common customs area, Sweden offers the least developed countries duty-free and quota-free market access in accordance with Target 17.12.
