Background

Introduction and Background

The 17 SDGs adopted by all UN member states in 2015, represent an integrated action plan to bring an end to poverty, fight inequalities and reduce climate change impacts while leaving no one behind, by 2030. Financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, however, remains a challenge. There is a large funding gap for SDGs at the global and regional level, and this gap continues to widen at the national level. Hence, most governments cannot fund their SDG priorities with public capital and Official Development Assistance (ODA) alone.

Access to financial flows and services plays a critical role in the implementation and achievement of the SDGs 2030. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) therefore calls for countries to establish Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs) to support implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Many countries in the Pacific have already aligned their National Development Plans and Strategies to the SDGs. The challenge is to ensure that these plans and strategies are supported by a financing strategy, which articulates how these aspirations would be financed. Most Pacific Island countries do not have financing strategies in place.

The effects of recent global developments and shocks such as the COVID19 pandemic, has dealt a severe blow to the world economy leading many countries to economic crisis and recession since March 2020. It set the economic and social development back for many countries jeopardizing the progress made to livelihoods and sustainable development over the past years. There is an urgent need to push for policy action to enable strong and sustainable growth, protecting the vulnerable and improving resilience to cope with shocks to the system. In addition, the financial flows required to move the Sustainable Development Agenda forward are also at risk of contracting.

In June 2020, Samoa’s Joint SDG Fund proposal for Component 1 was approved to provide support to Cook Islands, Niue, and Samoa to enable and strengthen existing policies and institutional structures for the development and operationalizing of Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFF), and through this Joint Programme, Niue will undertake a Development Finance Assessment (DFA) as the inception stage of operationalizing its INFF.

Generally, the Development Finance Assessment (DFA) is a tool to help countries shape the inception phase in the process of operationalizing an INFF which will support financing for sustainable development and building back better plans from effects of COVID19. The DFA offers support for governments and their development partners to identify and build consensus around solutions to address financing challenges through a multi-stakeholder approach. It makes a comprehensive analysis of the public and private financing outlook, financing policies and institutional structures, and opportunities to build a more integrated approach to financing.

The INFF Roadmap will be developed under the leadership of the Oversight Team and capture the steps agreed through the DFA process about how each of the INFF building blocks will be brought together and operationalized within the Niue context.

Objectives:

To Procure a National Consultant under the SDG Fund Joint Programme to assist the International Consultant to ensure the following outcomes. 

  • Establish the foundation of INFF in Niue through the development of DFA. 
  • Provide an INFF Roadmap on the steps that will be taken subsequently to operationalise an INFF in Niue.

The National Consultant will provide ground level support to the International Consultant (IC) to carry out the assessment of Financing Flows in Niue. This will lend strength to the DFA assignment and contextualize the INFF to reflect the Niue current socioeconomic environment.

In particular, the DFA will:

  • Provide an overview and comprehensive analysis of the public and private financing outlook, the evolution of the financing trends for development and their allocation and contribution to national priorities including COVID19 recovery plans and policies at national and sector levels. In particular, the overview will look to how systems can be strengthened to better align finance with Niue’s National development priorities, COVID19 Recovery Plans, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
  • Assess the role of the planning and budgeting process in linking both public and private finance with results, in the context of the SDGs if required.
  • Assess the roles and responsibilities of national institutions and their associated policies in managing or influencing the development of individual financial flows to contribute to national development plan, COVID Recovery and SDGs

Analyse the interface between different flows and the complementarities between the different sources of development finance in contributing to achieve COVID19 recovery plans, national priorities, and the SDGs.

Duties and Responsibilities

The National Consultant (NC) will provide support to the DFA Team of Experts namely the International Consultant and colleagues working across the office on both public and private finance and across thematic areas. This includes liaising with relevant government ministries and stakeholders; facilitate and take minutes of meetings and provide technical inputs and information on research and analysis as required by IC to meet the expected output and deliverables of the DFA work. Support by the National Consultant will include the following activities:

Liaise with Relevant Government Ministries and Stakeholders on behalf of International Consultant.

  • Support the Government with the establishment and overall coordination of the INFF Governance Structure -Technical Oversight Committee (TOR provided by UNDP) to provide guidance to the DFA Team of Experts and ensure government ownership and leadership of the INFF project.
  • Supporting the facilitation of meetings and the National Focal Point Secretariat roles.

Support International Consultant DFA Fieldwork.

The NC will provide technical inputs to assist IC in research and analysis of following:

  • Map the financial flows and Analyse policy and institutional options for alignment of priority of flows with Niue latest National Development Strategy and SDGs. This will include an institutional assessment of current mechanisms for promoting coherence and coordination across flows as well as the strengths and weaknesses of existing data systems for providing evidence upon which to base financing policies.
  • Provide on the ground support in facilitating financial dialogues with Stakeholders, such as relevant Government Ministries, Private Sector Entities, and CSOs.
  • Identify options to make the best use of these resources for financing the SDGs
  • INFF Roadmap - The NC under the guidance to the IC will liaise and work with country offices and government counterparts to develop national INFF roadmaps.

Provide backstop support and substantive quality assurance, including reviewing draft documents and contributing to achieving key outputs and deliverables. 

Competencies

  1. Demonstrating/safeguarding ethics and integrity
  2. Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment
  3. Self-development, initiative-taking
  4. Acting as a team player and facilitating teamwork
  5. Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively
  6. Creating synergies through self-control
  7. Managing conflict
  8. Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others. Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member
  9. Informed and transparent decision-making.

Required Skills and Experience

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF BEST OFFER

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as.

  1. Responsive/ Compliant/ Acceptable, and,
  2. Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

TECHNICAL CRITERIA WEIGHT – 70%

FINANCIAL CRITERIA WEIGHT – 30%

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% of the total technical points (49points) will be considered for the Financial Evaluation. Interviews may be conducted as part of the technical assessment for shortlisted proposals.

Technical Proposals (70%)

Technical Approach & Methodology (30 marks)

  • This explains the understanding of the objectives of the assignment, approach to the services, methodology for carrying out of the activities and obtaining the expected output, and the degree of detail of such output. The Applicant should also explain the methodologies proposed to adopt, highlight the compatibility of those methodologies with the proposed approach, and provide an indicative Workplan and total budget.

Qualification and Experience (40 marks) – Evaluation of CVs for Shortlisting

  1. Education (10marks)
  2. Minimum overall experience of 7 years in sustainable development financing, policy analysis, public finance, private sector development, strategic planning and budgeting, capacity building and advisory services (7.5marks)
  3. 5 years of experience supporting development partners or central government agencies in the area of development finance and public institutional governance and capacity building (7.5marks)
  4. 4 years supporting country level rooted public policy reforms in close collaboration with central government agencies, demonstrating ability to lead consultations with senior government officials and facilitate discussions among a wide group of stakeholders (5marks)
  5. Experience supporting Asia-Pacific governments in the establishment of integrated national financing frameworks (INFF); experience with development finance assessment (DFA) methodology will be considered a significant asset (6marks)
  6. 3 years of experience in data collection, analysis, and statistical tools (4marks)

Financial Proposal (30%)

  1. Financial proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price in local currency (including professional fee and all other related and applicable costs to be incurred by the individual consultant in completing the assignment), supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided (Annex II)
  2. The candidate is required to provide the breakdown of cost by deliverables as reflected in section D

Awarding of Contract

The combined scoring method which will be based on a combination of the technical and financial score to award the contract:

Rating the Technical Proposal (TP):

          TP Rating = (Total Score Obtained by the Offer / Max. Obtainable Score for TP) x 100

Rating the Financial Proposal (FP):

          FP Rating = (Lowest Priced Offer / Price of the Offer Being Reviewed) x 100

Total Combined Score:

Combined Score = (TP Rating) x (Weight of TP, 70%) + (FP Rating) x (Weight of FP, 30%)

NOTE: In the event of unforeseeable travel not anticipated in this TOR, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging, and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP and the Individual Consultant, before travel and will be reimbursed.

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Download the full Terms of Reference from the UNDP Procurement site link https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=87767 including the templates for submission of your proposal.