General Assembly Session 59 meeting 109

The Acting President

I call first on His Excellency Mr. Yerzhan Kazykhanov, Chairman of the delegation of Kazakhstan.

Mr. Kazykhanov (Kazakhstan)

Economic and social development and international cooperation are key elements of the preventive approach to collective security. The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals should become a central element in the international community's efforts to put an end to violent conflict, instability and terrorism.

The World Bank estimates that 1.1 billion people live in extreme poverty. Asia leads in numbers, but Africa has the largest proportion. The end of poverty will require a global network of cooperation among people. The September summit offers a unique opportunity to significantly advance the Millennium Development Goals and other development objectives.

Follow-up to the outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development remains a key item on the global development agenda. Kazakhstan recognizes the value of the action-oriented recommendations contained in the Secretary-General's report entitled "The Monterrey Consensus: status of implementation and the tasks ahead" (A/59/822). Those recommendations could be used at the country level by developing and least developed countries as they implement their national strategies and mobilize domestic resources.

We believe that the international development partners of those countries should continue to provide all required assistance in order to craft and implement national poverty-reduction strategies. Development partners should make concrete efforts towards compliance with their commitment to provide 0.7 per cent of gross national product as official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries. We welcome the progress made by some countries in that regard and the setting by others of a clear timetable for achieving that important objective.

Kazakhstan strongly believes that immediate debt relief should be provided to the heavily indebted poor countries. Achieving agreement on a common approach on that important issue will be vivid proof of the determination of the world community to assist developing countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We believe also that the problems faced by low-income countries are too profound to be ignored by the international community.

Kazakhstan attaches great importance to the innovative and unconventional sources of financing for development initiated by the United Nations and several Member States. We reiterate our willingness to contribute, within our means, to an improved international partnership to resolve the problems that we face today.

Trade is another important source of finance and a catalyst for development. An open, rule-based and equitable multilateral trading system can play a significant role in stimulating economic growth. Unfortunately, the existing multilateral trading system is unbalanced and works against the interests of the developing countries and countries in transition. We hope that, by accepting the report's trade-related recommendations, the international community can finalize the Doha round of trade talks.

Systemic issues such as coherence in international development policies remains an integral part of the collective efforts made by the international community to achieve the commitments set forth in the Millennium Declaration. Close cooperation between the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions and a more active role on the part of regional and subregional organizations in the implementation phase will help successfully to achieve a people-centred development approach.

Kazakhstan is actively contributing to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. National development priorities are embodied in the Kazakhstan 2010 national strategy and in the long-term vision of Kazakhstan 2030. Extensive economic and social reforms have already brought about tangible results. We have built a functioning market economy. We have attracted more than $3 billion in foreign direct investment, and international experts have recognized the financial system of Kazakhstan as one of the most advanced.

Rapid economic growth has made it possible to expand substantially the social targeting of Government expenditures, but a great deal remains to be done. The President of Kazakhstan, in his recent state-of-the-nation address, indicated that:

"Our agenda today is a new milestone in the economic and political development of the country and in its further modernization and democratization. Kazakhstan should join the ranks of efficiently developing economies while ensuring a high standard of living for our population."

As a member of the Group of Landlocked Developing Countries, Kazakhstan believes that account should be taken, fully and consistently, of the interests of that Group in the decision-making process in the area of economic development, international trade and interregional cooperation.

Kazakhstan would like to see clearer and more specific recommendations regarding strengthened efforts by development partners to provide assistance to landlocked developing States.

Our country continues to believe that regional cooperation, primarily South-South cooperation, and open borders, free of tariff and customs barriers, are key to making economies more competitive. For that reason, Kazakhstan is focussing its efforts on the establishment of a union of Central Asian States, as proposed by the President of Kazakhstan in his most recent annual address to the nation.

We believe that Central Asia can serve as a testing ground for the recommendations of the Almaty Programme of Action related to the development of a new global framework for cooperation between landlocked developing countries, transit developing countries and their development partners.

In conclusion, we would express our confidence that the decisions and recommendations of this dialogue will be included in the outcome document of the United Nations summit to be held in September and give additional impetus towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The Acting President

I call on Her Excellency Mrs. Laxanachantorn Laohaphan, Chairperson of the delegation of Thailand.

Mrs. Laohaphan (Thailand)

Today's meeting is not only crucial for the review and follow-up of the issue of financing for development, but also important for the High-level Plenary Meeting to be held in September, as it will provide fodder for the deliberations of many Heads of State or Government to review the implementation of the Millennium Declaration, including the Millennium Development Goals.

But before my delegation offers some viewpoints from Thailand's perspective, we wish to associate ourselves with the statement made earlier by the representative of Jamaica on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, which highlighted many critical issues relating to financing for development that are of concern to the developing countries.

My delegation strongly believes that international trade has been and remains the prime and most powerful source of financing for development. It is with this belief in mind that my delegation agrees with the Secretary-General's call for the completion, no later than 2006, of the Doha round negotiations, which has to be a genuine "development round". Member countries must also work towards the full realization of development objectives through enhanced market access and the elimination of trade-distorting domestic and export subsidies, especially as concerns agricultural products.

Furthermore, my delegation wishes to underline the need to enhance policy space for developing countries as well as technical assistance and capacity-building programmes for developing countries. We also wish to call on the international community to address the problem of volatile commodity prices.

Besides trade, foreign direct investment has always been another important supplementary source of financing for development. We have learned this from our own experience. Thailand is not only a recipient of foreign direct investment from private entrepreneurs and trans-national corporations, but it is also investing in various industries in neighbouring countries in the petrochemical, mining, food and beverage, communications and energy areas, among others. In that vein, we are pleased to see that investment between developing countries, or South-South investment, has been increasing incrementally.

In the regional context, resources for development may be mobilized in different ways. My delegation takes note with interest of the recent initiative of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to explore the possibility of setting up an Asian investment bank, and we look forward to learning more about that initiative in due course. With respect to a more familiar initiative, Thailand is working with our developing and developed partners towards the Asian Bond Fund as a key regional financial instrument in the Asian region. Not only does such a Fund provide the necessary resources for Asian countries where needed, it also acts as a safeguard against the unpredictable fluctuation in the exchange rates in international financial markets.

On the domestic front, Thailand has adopted a bold and innovative people-centred development approach. The Thai Government has introduced a number of measures with positive results. We take pride in our initiatives, such as village revolving funds and the "One Village, One Product" initiative, which have been the main engines of our economic growth and development for the past five years, and we are willing to share our experiences with others, either through bilateral technical cooperation or through other mechanisms such as the South-South Cooperation and the regional commissions.

That does not mean that every country will have the same opportunity. Thailand fully recognizes that official development assistance (ODA) has an important role to play in providing the resources for developing countries to achieve their development goals. However, ODA should be supplementary to other sources of funding, particularly domestic resources. In that regard, we wish to call for its predictability and sustainability as well as for freedom from conditionalities or additional burdens to the recipient countries. Thailand wishes to commend those countries that have already fulfilled their ODA commitments, and we welcome the timetables adopted recently by the countries members of the European Union. With regard to those countries that have not yet done so, we would like to call upon them to do so without delay.

We welcome the International Finance Facility (IFF) initiative of the United Kingdom as an innovative financing mechanism and will follow with great interest the way in which it is implemented. We also wish to express our appreciation for the development and humanitarian assistance fund recently announced by the Government of Qatar at the Second South Summit, held at Doha. However, although such funds are available, we must not forget that, as with ODA, the IFF and the development fund should be supplements to -- not substitutes for -- national efforts to attain the Development Goals.

Before concluding, my delegation would like to touch upon a systemic issue that, in our view, is by no means less important than finding sources of funding itself. In that regard, my delegation is optimistic that the Economic and Social Council, in cooperation with regional commissions and organizations, can step in and play the crucial role of a mechanism to promote system-wide coordination and integrated and coordinated implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the major United Nations conferences. Therefore, we urge Member States to empower the Economic and Social Council so that it can perform that task more efficiently.

In that connection, my delegation welcomed and supported the holding of the joint meeting among the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the Economic and Social Council. It provided an opportunity for those bodies to listen and to learn from one another to identify problems and formulate solutions, and it paved the way for the strengthening of coherence among those institutions at all levels. My delegation thus supports the initiative of the President of the Economic and Social Council to strengthen that Council, and we look forward to participating in any discussions that may ensue in due course.

The Acting President

I now call on His Excellency Mr. Serge Chappatte, Chairman of the delegation of Switzerland.

Mr. Chappatte (Switzerland)

As the recent report of the Secretary-General (A/59/2005) very eloquently shows, our world has become much more complex and interdependent. Such globalization certainly offers excellent opportunities, but it also carries very significant risks. That situation requires new strategies.

That is why participants in the Monterrey Conference, seeking new development financing solutions, agreed on an ambitious and multidimensional approach involving all Governments, multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and the private sector. I should like, first of all, to emphasize that Switzerland reaffirms its commitment to the Monterrey approach, which calls upon all concerned actors to join efforts on a broad front at the national, regional and global levels to seek to attain all the agreed objectives.

It is absolutely crucial that developing countries, which bear primary responsibility for their own development, formulate and implement efficient and effective anti-poverty strategies, create conditions conducive to humane and ecologically sustainable development and, in order to do that, mobilize their own resources to the extent possible. For their part, industrialized countries are called upon to increase their development aid and to improve its quality and effectiveness, to facilitate the transfer of other resources and to further open their markets to developing countries, particularly the poorest of those countries. They are also called upon to further improve the coordination of their macroeconomic policies in order to strengthen global economic stability and thus to improve the predictability of financial flows to developing countries and countries in transition.

Although I cannot go into detail here on the six clusters of the Monterrey Consensus, I wish to share the following observations. We note that many developing countries in the past few years have adopted anti-poverty strategies and that they are now in the process of adapting their economic, fiscal, social and environmental policies. However, the progress of those reforms and the degree to which they have taken effect vary considerably from country to country. Furthermore, a good number of those countries remain very vulnerable to shocks caused by external economic changes. It is therefore crucial that those countries' efforts be pursued and strengthened, with the support of their bilateral and multilateral partners.

As for the commitments made by industrialized countries, it must be acknowledged that our performance varies significantly. We, too, are called upon to continue and further strengthen our efforts with regard to both the quantity and the quality of our aid.

As a result of its efforts in recent years, Switzerland is on track to attain the objective to which it committed itself at Monterrey. With 0.41 per cent of our gross national income (GNI) devoted to official development assistance (ODA), we now rank eighth among the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in aid volume as compared with GNI, and we are among the top 10 donors to the International Development Association of the World Bank, the African Development Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund. Despite the implementation of a comprehensive fiscal reform plan decided upon by the Swiss people, our ODA is one of the few budget items that might increase -- by some 8 per cent -- during the period 2006-2008. However, the Swiss Government, recognizing the need to contribute further to the collective development aid effort, is committed to reviewing the situation as soon as possible in order to set a new ODA objective beyond 2008.

In the immediate future, Switzerland will continue its support in the crucial areas identified in the Monterrey Consensus, particularly strengthening the governance and management capacities of its bilateral partners in areas such as fiscal administration, including debt management, financial services, microfinance and the promotion of exports and private investment. We will also devote particular attention to establishing partnerships with the private sector in order to increase the positive effects of our development cooperation.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains Switzerland's particular development cooperation partner, with half of our bilateral and multilateral commitments benefiting that portion of the continent in its struggle to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

With regard to the debt problem, Switzerland has contributed significantly to the implementation of concrete debt alleviation measures both at the multilateral level by making a swift commitment under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, and at the bilateral level by introducing innovative measures in 1991 to completely eliminate bilateral debt. We therefore welcome the intention recently announced by the Group of Eight (G-8) to cancel the multilateral debt of heavily indebted poor countries. Many questions remain concerning the modalities for implementing and financing that initiative. Switzerland will play an active role in identifying lasting solutions to those questions.

Switzerland has closely followed the international discussion on mobilizing new resources for development, and we have examined in detail the various proposals that have been made. Although we have fundamental reservations regarding the mechanisms for mobilizing resources at the global level, we are prepared to consider participating on a voluntary basis in more limited mechanisms, such as the International Finance Facility pilot project to promote immunization.

Increasing the level of ODA is certainly very important, but we must also act very swiftly to improve the effectiveness and impact of our aid. Results in that area can be achieved only through very substantial joint efforts by all concerned partners. Important decisions were taken recently in Paris to substantially improve the harmonization and alignment of development aid. Switzerland is fully committed to that collective effort.

In that context, I should like to stress that it is increasingly urgent that we improve the coherence of the division of labour among the major multilateral entities, particularly the United Nations system, the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization. Switzerland wishes to contribute actively to that debate.

The implementation of the Monterrey Consensus undoubtedly remains a major challenge for the entire international community. It is essential that all parties concerned in this new global partnership shoulder their responsibilities and act in a concerted manner. Switzerland is resolved to come forward and do its part.

The Acting President

I now call on His Excellency Mr. Bruce Montador, Chairman of the delegation of Canada.

Mr. Montador (Canada)

This year, the attention of the entire world is on its poorest citizens. This year promises to be a turning point in the fight against poverty. The global community has mobilized, and momentum is building. The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is squarely on the international agenda.

At Monterrey, we established the basis of a partnership to help mobilize the resources necessary to achieve the MDGs. Developing countries have the primary responsibility to create the conditions that can lead to pro-poor growth. Much remains to be done, but tremendous progress can been seen in improving governance, tackling corruption, investing in people and infrastructure and creating the right conditions to unleash entrepreneurship.

Along with other donors, Canada committed itself to support the efforts of developing countries to establish strong foundations for their sustainable development. Clearly, that meant increasing our aid. Since Monterrey, Canada has been on track to fulfil our promise and double our aid by 2010. In fact, our recently released international policy statement extended that commitment to growth at 8 per cent per year beyond 2010, at what I hope will be an even more rapid rate of increase.

More important, we want to make our aid better and more effective. We are aligning our efforts with the priorities of our development partners. We are working with other donors to harmonize our procedures, as the recent conference in Paris showed. We are focusing on priority sectors and countries where we know we have the expertise and the experience to make a lasting difference.

However, aid is only a small part of the development puzzle. It works best when it is part of a broader and more coherent set of policies. Canada's international policy statement sets out firm directions and ambitious targets for Canada's foreign policy. Establishing clearer links among our development, diplomatic, trade and security agendas will help to ensure that our actions in areas other than development cooperation take the interests and needs of developing countries into account.

In terms of economic growth, the United Nations Commission on the Private Sector and Development demonstrated that private sector development is, indeed, the engine of that growth. Access to financial resources is the key to unleashing entrepreneurship. Microfinance, especially for women entrepreneurs, supports growth that actively engages and directly benefits the poor, and attracting investment, both domestic and foreign, is crucial to expanding opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Such investment is going to demand a strong enabling environment. One way to strengthen the enabling environment is through the negotiation of foreign investment protection agreements or bilateral investment treaties to better manage and mitigate investment risk. Those instruments support the rule of law and foster fairness, transparency, non-discrimination, accountability and good governance, which benefit all investors while preserving a Government's ability to regulate in the public interest.

Canada views the World Trade Organization (WTO) as an important forum in our integrated approach to help achieve the MDGs. Developing-country interests lie at the heart of the Doha Development Agenda. Only an ambitious outcome in the core negotiations, especially in agriculture, will help create real economic opportunities for development. However, better market access and an end to distorting first-world subsidies are not going to transform business by themselves. In addition to the very important changes to the institutional environment in developing countries that I mentioned earlier, there is a need for important improvements to economic infrastructure, from the basics of rural roads to broader energy, transportation and communications investment. Those are areas where the poorest countries will need substantial help from the World Bank and the regional development banks.

Mr. Montador (Canada)

At the beginning of this month, the finance ministers of the Group of Eight agreed to cancel fully the debt owed by the heavily indebted poor countries to the International Development Association of the World Bank, the African Development Fund and the International Monetary Fund. Those countries, most of which are in Africa, must follow certain procedures required to attain such assistance. New resources devoted to debt relief will make it possible for them to invest in public services, such as health and education, to which all the citizens of the world have an undeniable right. That is excellent news for Africa.

Moreover, Canada has increased its aid to Africa, where the need is greatest. By 2008, our assistance to that continent will have doubled compared with its 2003 level.

Everywhere in the world, inequalities prevent people from realizing their potential and from doing what they want to do to improve their lot and increase the prosperity of their communities. Let us continue to forge ahead. Together, we can effect real change.

The Acting President

I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Tens Kapoma, Chairman of the delegation of Zambia.

Mr. Kapoma (Zambia)

My delegation would like to associate itself with the statement made by the representative of Jamaica on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, to which we belong.

Zambia is one of the least developed countries that has benefited from the practical implementation of the Monterrey Consensus and the Rome Declaration. I am proud to report that, following good performance under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, with increased social spending and other Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt (HIPC) Initiative triggers, Zambia successfully reached the HIPC conclusion point in April 2005. That has resulted in the reduction by $3.8 billion of Zambia's debt stock of $7.1 billion in 2004. In addition, Zambia was one of the beneficiaries of the 100 per cent cancellation of debt to the Bretton Woods institutions proposed at the last meeting of the Group of Eight.

Consequently, the debt stock has reduced significantly, to less than $2 billion. That will facilitate increased expenditure on development programmes. Going forward, the Government has embarked on policies and strategies that will ensure debt sustainability, among them prudent debt management, soliciting more grants as opposed to loans, and efforts to tackle domestic debt, which remains a major problem.

Zambia is currently implementing the Harmonization in Practice initiative and has signed a memorandum of understanding with 15 developed country partners. The memorandum of understanding outlines partnership commitments on aid effectiveness based on ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing for results and mutual accountability. Positive outputs so far include the development of an aid policy, increased programme support, improved dialogue and coordination among stakeholders. There are also improved modalities for the delivery of aid, aimed at the reduction of transaction costs through silent partnerships and the delegation of powers.

The achievements so far are only a step in the right direction. More needs to be done to address both political and institutional issues by both Government and development partners. The Government recognizes the fact that it has the primary responsibility for developing the country using domestic resources. However, due to weaknesses in the economy, that is not possible in the short and medium term; it can realize that goal only with the assistance of development partners. However, in order to create an environment conducive to development, the Government is determined to scale up structural reforms in public expenditure and financial management, as well as to remove bottlenecks to private sector development. Those efforts are aimed at both political and economic good governance as the only key to sustainable development and aid effectiveness. However, in the spirit of the Monterrey Consensus, those efforts need to be complemented with affirmative action from development partners. More needs to be done in a number of areas.

First, conditionalities need to be reduced and untied aid increased. Secondly, the multiple performance assessment frameworks should be eliminated. Each major donor support has its own performance framework. That is a huge burden in terms of time and capacity for countries like Zambia. There is need to harmonize such frameworks into one that is acceptable to all.

Thirdly, more needs to be done in changing the mindset of development partners who are still clinging to their "darlings". This is manifested in the over-concentration of donors in a few sectors that may not necessarily be a priority of the recipient country. Zambia is currently developing a fifth national development plan for 2006 to 2011. Efforts are being made to align aid to the national plan through a joint assistance strategy. Our appeal to all partners is to follow this path and not to do otherwise.

Fourthly, there is also a need to strengthen the power of donor field offices based in developing countries to manage and make decisions on aid delivery so as to avoid the "post office syndrome". That would cut down on delays and would ensure timely interventions, as compared with waiting for instructions from headquarters.

Where there are partnerships, it is only prudent to ensure that mechanisms are put in place for monitoring and mutual accountability, in order to ensure that commitments are met on a timely basis. Information-sharing in this sense is cardinal, especially when it concerns the full magnitude and purpose of the aid and the programmes to be supported.

Zambia feels the winds of change in the manner in which issues are being debated in the international arena and how concrete commitments are being realized. There has been a tremendous shift from the usual rhetoric to action, especially on issues to do with poverty reduction and sustainable development. On that point, I would like to commend development partners such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, France, Germany, the European Union and the Nordic countries, among others, for having come up with more innovative ways of increasing the volume of ODA for developing countries. The onus is on us, as least developed countries, to seize the moment for our benefit. Our goals can effectively be realized through strategic partnerships based on harmonization, ownership, alignment, results and mutual accountability.

The Acting President

I give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Mourad Benmehidi of Algeria.

Mr. Benmehidi (Algeria)

A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.

<type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'>: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe0' in position 4837: ordinal not in range(128)
      args = ('ascii', u'\n\t<p id="pg008-bk02-pa01">My delegation endorses...cluding the low- and middle-income countries.</p>', 4837, 4838, 'ordinal not in range(128)')
      encoding = 'ascii'
      end = 4838
      message = ''
      object = u'\n\t<p id="pg008-bk02-pa01">My delegation endorses...cluding the low- and middle-income countries.</p>'
      reason = 'ordinal not in range(128)'
      start = 4837