Pingfan Hong, the Director of DPAD, was invited by the Chinese Government to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), 14-15 May 2017, Beijing, China. The Belt and Road Forum is closely related to the work of DPAD in three specific tasks as follows: (1)A research to study the linkages from the five priority areas for international development cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the seven Action Areas of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and the policy implications of the Belt and Road for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; (2) An ongoing capacity development project funded by the RPTC to analyze macroeconomic implications of the Belt and Road Initiative for six Central Asian economies; and (3) A newly approved capacity development project for 2018-2019, funded by the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund, to strengthen national policy capacity for jointly building the Belt and Road towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

There are four key elements of the new project:(1) Training and institutional networking of policymakers and policy researchers in participating countries; (2) Policy dialogue at national and international levels; (3) Joint research and policy analysis among the project participants on various policy options and alternative scenarios under the Belt and Road initiative for the achievement of the SDGs; (4) Publication and dissemination of the project outcome.