Rajat Gupta, senior partner McKinsey & Company, Wednesday called for private-public partnership to boost development as envisaged by the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
Addressing a plenary meeting at the 60th UN General Assembly, Gupta said sometimes 'mistrust and misunderstanding prohibit us from meeting together very often for boosting development,'
'But the simple truth is that there is no hope for development without business and in the long term, there is no business without development,' he said.
He said enlightened business interests should send business leaders to the development table to be the co-architects of development strategies and to join in public-private partnerships.
'I say to business leaders 'Do not do it under pressure but do it because you will be building strong communities filled with prosperous citizens',' Gupta said.
Among those he addressed at the plenary meeting on 'Finance for Development ' included Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf , World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and China's Premier HU Jintao.
Gupta
'As for governance, I say you cannot hope for development without business , but business does need you to be successful.," he said.
In the most underdeveloped economies, aid and innovative financing provided by rich countries can create the minimum threshold required for the private sector to prosper, Gupta pointed out.
'It is only when the MDGs are actively pursued the virtuous economic cycle can begin,' he said.
Opening the plenary session earlier, UN Secretary Kofi Annan said that for the international community it is crucial to devise strategies that are ambitious enough to meet the goals and other important development objectives of the MDG.
For the international community, it means 'supporting those steps through wide-ranging global reforms, more and better aid, trade policies that give a fair chance to developing countries' and more investment in the world's poorest countries.'
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