On September 2015 the UN General Assembly has approved the new Sustainable Development Goals which should be achieved by 2030, sometime called Agenda 2030. The seventeen goals include 169 targets and 241 indicators, whose attainment could require hundreds of trillion dollars in the coming 13 years. Financial flows to developing which have greatly increased since 2000, in particular private flows, both Foreign Direct Investments and remittances but also Portfolio flows; in a sense a lot of the savings are out there.

A fist contribution of the paper regards the analysis of the conditions which should  help to make the best possible use of these foreign financial means. The paper shows that an effective financing for development requires for the full application of the principles of universality and differentiation which are part of Agenda 2030. The first principle implies that the Goals are for each country, the second one recognizes that there are different responsibilities according to the different levels of income per capita. Sustainable Development Goal number 17, the last one, asks for global partnership for development and indicates several areas where this partnership should unfold, including finance. The paper tries to work out some suggestions for the actual working of this partnership and for achievement of the goals, or at least of some targets inside them.

A second contribution of the paper concerns the international financial setting of which development finance is the part. The paper shows that international finance is in a situation of Financial Mercantilism, which is defined in the paper by referring both the writers of the Mercantilist period and to the present working of financial systems. There are many similarities between the operation of old days merchants and today financial intermediaries. This is not the best setting for long-term development finance and this fact creates serious problems both for the channelling of the funds towards development goals but also and more worryingly for many  developing countries themselves. Unfortunately some features of the debt crisis of the eighties could be back. The paper discusses how to limit and to mitigate the possible negative impacts of Financial mercantilism on development finance. Policy recommedations are hinted in the conclusive part of the paper.