Twenty-fourth Meeting of the Committee of Experts of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Opening Remarks
By Dr. George T. Irele, Abuja, Nigeria Mr. Chairman, It is my pleasure to welcome you all to the 24th Meeting of the Committee of Experts of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development here in Abuja. I hope that you have found the facilities put in place for this meeting adequate. On behalf of the Ministry of Finance of Nigeria, and on my own behalf, I wish to apologize in advance for any shortcomings in our hosting arrangement which might constrain your deliberations. May I begin by thanking all of you for coming here to share your knowledge and expertise on an issue of deep concern for our continent; and by thanking the Executive Secretary of ECA for his very thoughtful remarks this morning. I would also like to extend my sincere appreciation to all the friends and colleagues who are here with us today for this important meeting. Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, After all the statements that you have heard already, there seems little that I can add to the analysis of the theme of this conference or indeed, the way forward. But I will try and give you my own personal appraisal on the issues on our agenda and indicate to you where I believe we need to go from here. We meet first and foremost to make recommendations that will shape Africa's position in two major international events of particular relevance for Africa. These are the UN High-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals in September and the G8 Summit in July. The recommendations you make will be an important input to these meetings as well as to the Ministerial meeting which takes place immediately following our meeting. This year presents a unique opportunity for the international community take bold actions to attain the MDGs or risk losing the fight against poverty. I strongly urge that we seize this opportunity to scale up action that is so urgently needed to reach the MDGs particularly in Africa where the challenge of meeting the MDGs is most formidable. The MDGs can and must be met in Africa by 2015, but not if we continue doing what we are doing. So what should we try to achieve with this welcome opportunity for Africa? How should we act to boost our growth to levels that would give us a chance of meeting the MDGs? In the medium term, this will surely require actions by both African countries and their development partners, consistent with the partnership forged in Monterrey, namely that of mutual accountability and responsibility. For African countries, the tasks are very clear. We must commit ourselves to sound, transparent and accountable national policies and strategies, which we ourselves devise and of which we take full ownership, for mobilizing all our resources in the fight against poverty. Specifically, we must continue to build capacity, improve governance and institutions, to persist with legal, judicial, administrative and financial reforms, and invest in our people. We must also focus more on results - monitoring and managing properly so that growth and poverty reduction goals can be achieved. NEPAD and the African Peer Review Mechanism points the way for us. Let me now turn to what Africa's development partners can do to complement the continent's efforts. First, developed countries must deliver on their promises at Monterrey for more and better ODA and focus on implementation of their promises to work towards supporting Africa in achieving the MDGs. They must commit themselves to timetables for reaching the 0.7% ODA target, with front-loading through an international finance facility or other mechanism, explore new sources of finance, and seek new ways to ensure that the debt of African countries is genuinely sustainable. They need to untie aid, and move to better coordinate and harmonize development programmes and policies. The fragmentation of donors' efforts has long plagued the effectiveness of their support. Second, developed countries must focus on more and better trade. It is time to deliver on the Doha agenda to make it a true development round. We know that rich country barriers to trade are crippling Africa's efforts to trade its way out of poverty. Rich countries must dramatically reduce these barriers that all too often are protectionist. For example, several studies have shown that the removal of US subsidies on cotton alone would increase revenues from the crop by about $250 million for West and Central African countries. Rich countries must use the opportunity of the WTO Hong Kong meeting in December to make firm commitments to remove trade-distorting subsidies in agriculture. Third, we must focus on more and better partnership. The principles of NEPAD and the PRSs which place leadership in defining poverty reduction strategies squarely with African countries, offer the hope for a new aid relationship based on partnership and mutual accountability. The PRSP process and other national, country-owned, development strategies determine where assistance is most needed. For most African countries, it is in health, education, rural infrastructure, capacity building for improved governance and agriculture. Being partners means that we must work together to do a better job at delivering aid more efficiently and measure results for effectiveness. It is for this reason that ECA and the OECD/DAC have prepared a report on mutual review which will be presented to this meeting tomorrow. Mr. Chairman, together, we have set 2015 as the deadline for achieving results. We must together, move beyond words to implementation. We have said we are mutually accountable. It is time to implement it if the goals of 2015 are to be achieved. This meeting should, therefore, be seen as an invitation to our development partners to join and support our efforts towards achieving the MDGs. Their assistance can be much more effective if they accept the notion that they and us should be mutually accountable for development outcomes. As African policy-makers, we should capitalize on the unique opportunity that the UN review of the MDGs presents to develop a common strategy that can help maximize the potential outcome for Africa from the review. I sincerely hope that our meeting today will do just that. Distinguished experts, At our last meeting in Kampala, we also addressed a number of statutory issues. In particular, we considered a report on the external review of the work of the ECA secretariat and gave our views on the proposed biennial programme plan for the period 2006-2007. In the next few days, we will take one step further by endorsing the proposed programme of work and priorities for the period 2006-2007. In this regard, we welcome the fact that ECA has made the implementation of the MDGs and NEPAD a major priority of its work in the next biennium. With those few opening remarks, I trust that our deliberations over the next few days will be fruitful. I thank you all for your attention. |
