Votre Excellence M. Boni YAYI, Président de la République, Chef de l’Etat et du Gouvernement de la République du Bénin
Votre Excellence Madame la Ministre des Affaires Etrangères du Bénin
Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres des pays les moins avancés
Votre Excellence M. le Secrétaire Général Adjoint de l’ONU et Haut Représentant pour les pays les moins avancés, les pays en développement sans littoral et les petits Etats insulaires en développent.
Votre Excellence M. le Secrétaire Général Adjoint de l’ONU et Secrétaire Exécutif de la CESAP
Madame et Messieurs les Représentants des Etats membres
Membres éminents du Corps Diplomatique
Mesdames et Messieurs,

Je suis vraiment heureux d’être ici dans une ville aussi accueillante et chaleureuse que Cotonou, la Capitale économique de la République du Bénin, pour participer à cette Session Ministérielle de la réunion consacrée aux PMA. Je tiens à adresser mes sincères remerciements au Gouvernement Béninois pour l’organisation de cette réunion importante et pour la chaleureuse hospitalité dont nous avons bénéficié, ma délégation, tous les participants et moi-même. Je me félicite en effet des efforts de ce pays et de son rôle remarquable pour nous aider à rester concentrés sur le programme des PMA.

Je veux d’emblée faire l’éloge de la maturité avec laquelle le peuple du Bénin continue à gérer le processus démocratique dans leur pays, qui se traduit par des transitions présidentielles et parlementaires sans heurts. Je voudrais, à cet égard, rendre hommage à Vous Monsieur le Président et vous assurer le soutien sans faille de la CEA au moment où vous lancez votre programme de réformes et développement.

Mr. Chairman
Honourable Ministers

As we gather here today to consolidate our resolve to implement the measures needed to address the peculiar challenges faced by LDCs, the majority of which are from the African continent, allow me to refresh our minds on some of the key challenges facing the LDCs as reflected in the Brussels Programme of Action.

As you will recall the Brussels Programme of Action (BPoA) for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) for the Decade 2001-2010 provides goals and targets along with action- oriented commitments in seven critically important areas.

Earlier this year in February, we met in Addis Ababa for the African Preparatory Meeting on the LDC Mid-Term Review. As you will recall, the meeting set out to review progress being made by the 34 African LDCs to achieve the goals and targets of the 2001 BPoA, a commitment undertaken by Heads of States worldwide to promote development in the LDCs.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

As observed during this meeting, the implementation of the BPoA among African LDCs up to now shows that there is some progress on the various commitments, but there are also huge challenges to overcome.

Africa has been witnessing some robust economic growth averaging 6 percent per annum since 2001. However, this growth has not lead to significant reduction in poverty. The incidence of poverty in LDCs remains high at around 43 percent. The high average growth has been driven by oil-producing LDCs, and has remained insufficient in non-oil producing LDCs to lead to significant increases in per capita income and in employment. This highlights the need for deepening the quality of economic growth and broadening its employment impact. Therefore, despite the progress made on growth rates, we still need to do significantly more to lift people out of poverty.

Many African LDCs have also adopted a path towards good governance and made laudable effort to promote democracy and human rights, public management reforms, combat graft, and protect and empower the most vulnerable, namely women and children.

More significantly, more than half of the 34 African LDCs have signed up to the African Peer Review Mechanism to subject themselves to voluntary self assessment in areas including political representation, institutional effectiveness, human rights, the rule of law, independence of media, and civil organisations, economic management and combating corruption.

Also on health, LDCs recognize that the spiralling rates of HIV/AIDS infection coupled with deepening poverty poses a serious threat to the development by affecting their productive capacities and ultimately, their economic growth. Therefore, since 2001, several African LDCs have implemented strategies to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS including providing anti-retroviral treatment to increasing numbers and the introduction of alternative health care options.

Since the Februrary Mid- Term Review meeting in Addis Ababa, there have been other significant fora touching  on various issues consistent with the BPoA. ECA has just concluded the Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in Ouagadougou on the burning issue of employment and development, back-to-back with the Annual Meeting of the African Development Bank. The prognosis was that successful employment generation strategies are key to poverty reduction and social stability. Increasing employment, especially for the poor, women and youth requires sustainable pro-poor growth and agricultural modernization. Public, private, and international resource spending must focus on providing the infrastructure needed to support the growth of labour absorbing enterprises in agriculture, industry, particularly agro-industry, and commerce. No less important are investments in human capital, with special attention to the health and education sectors, which prepare the population to take advantage of employment opportunities, provided by economic growth. Expanding and improving investment opportunities will enhance the quality of employment, and absorb Africa’s rapidly growing labour force. African Governments must provide an environment that increases private sector demand for labour, especially for women and youth.

In March this year, we also met in Cairo on the important issue of the PRSPs and their relevance in meeting the challenges of the MDGs. The meeting adopted an Outcome Document setting out various recommendations to scale up efforts to meeting the objectives of MDG-based Poverty Reduction Strategies. It has been noted that of the 20 African LDCs that have PRSPs, none explicitly mention the BPoA, though 11 do refer to the MDGs.

Just recently in Abuja, the Nigerian Government in collaboration with the ECA and the African Development Bank also organised a meeting on financing for development, the central message of which was to move from Commitment to Action. The meeting, which was well attended by all stakeholders and partners in Africa’s development addressed four key challenges:

¨      A framework for scaling up efforts to reach the MDGs

¨      Monitoring Commitments and Actions towards achieving the MDGs

¨      Dealing with the macroeconomic impacts of scaling up aid, and last but not least,

¨      Emerging Aid Architecture

All of these meetings have a significant bearing on the BPoA. We all know about the huge challenges we face as LDCs. But I dare say that these challenges are not insurmountable, provided we act now and act fast. We have through these various fora put together action plans to do what we need to do to accelerate the implementation of poverty-reduction strategies anchored on the achievement of the MDGs, and which overlap with the human- centred objectives of the BPoA.

It is quite clear from the outcomes of these diverse fora including the ones we are having today that two things are at least apparent:

¨      We are crystal clear in our goals and objectives to accelerating development in the LDCs, including addressing the critical human security issues of poverty reduction and the attainment of the MDGs.

¨      Clear action plans exist in our individual countries as a basis for scaling up efforts and resources towards achieving these and other objectives contained in the Brussels Programme of Action.

What we need now is to move from Commitment to Action. In this regard, we need to scale up resources to implement the various plans, with enhanced support from our development partners in quantity, quality and predictability of aid, and with enhanced commitment to removing the market access difficulties faced by African countries in international trade.

ECA is ready to play its part, as your Economic Commission, to help you develop and vigorously pursue inclusive growth strategies, manage economic policy that equally addresses human and social development needs, establish the conditions germane to peace and stability, and build coalitions for the mobilisation of global support for African LDCs. ECA is already directly assisting the Brussels Program of Action through areas such as the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the mutual review on development effectiveness, trade and environment workshops, seminars on debt relief, trade negotiations, and capital market development, and activities relating to gender parity.

The African Union, the African Development Bank, and Regional Economic Communities have also focused on African LDCS with certain degree of success. A revitalised focus on overcoming challenges at the regional level will also go a long way in accelerating progress towards the Brussels Programme. In this endeavour, I would like to pledge ECA’s commitment to building partnerships and synergies with these other strategic institutions of our continent.

In the area of assistance to post-conflict economies, in particular, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development endorsed ECA’s recommendation to set up a technical capacity building and a funding initiative with relevant stakeholders to support employment generation and re-establish economic development management systems in African post-conflict economies.

Mr. Chairman
Distinguished Ministers
Ladies and Gentlemen

At this juncture, allow me to share with you our reform initiatives designed to strengthen ECA to help African countries, in particular, LDCs, move from commitment to action on various strategic issues. The ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance meeting in Ouagadougou has endorsed our proposal for the repositioning of ECA in the African development scenario. Our proposal, in the spirit of collaboration and coordination, was informed by comprehensive consultations, including ECA staff, Member States, key partners such as the AU Commission, AfDB, the RECs, members of the UN System and other stakeholders.

The initiative to reposition ECA comes in the wake of the 2005 World Summit Outcome’s clear orientation for improving the operations and work focus within the limited resources we have at our disposal, in order to address two key challenges: 1) the challenge of regional integration as an instrument for accelerating Africa’s collective transformation, and 2) the challenge of meeting Africa’s special needs and the global challenges it faces. On regional integration, we will continue to support the African Union in its quest to accelerate the political and socio-economic integration of the continent, promote and defend African common positions, and establish conditions to enable the continent to fully play its role in and benefit from the global economic mainstream. With respect to the special challenges, these undoubtedly include efforts to accelerate the achievement of the goals embodied in NEPAD, PRSPs, MDGs, and the Brussels Program of Action, wherein social development, food security and governance issues will be among our major areas of concentration. To this end, we are in the process of establishing an inter-divisional hub for LDCs that brings together our international body of experts, harmonising the outputs of our divisions in support of the African LDCs.

In addition, two crosscutting issues are of critical importance to both regional integration and addressing the special needs of Africa. Gender equality and women empowerment, a crosscutting theme in the Brussels Program of Action, is of vital importance not only in terms of human rights, but also due to the positive impact of gender equality on overall poverty reduction and economic growth.

Another critical area of focus will be statistics. Working in close collaboration with the African Development Bank and the African Union, we intend to scale-up our efforts in this vital input to tracking and making progress on all fronts of our development agendas including the Brussels Program of Action. Our interventions will not only address the data needs and analytical requirements, but will also focus on building capacity in our Member States to develop and use statistics as an instrument of policy analysis, planning, economic management and development.

Mr. Chairman
Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests and Participants

Let me say a few words on South-South cooperation to conclude my remarks because I believe that South-South cooperation is one of the important avenues for enhancing the achievement of the objectives of the Brussels Program of Action. South-South cooperation offers enormous learning and trade potential for our countries. For example, as UNCTAD and the WTO have recently indicated, south-south trade is fast developing, with over 40 per cent of developing countries’ exports going to other developing countries.

In the last two decades, Asian markets have become essential for African firms, as they represented 17 per cent of their exports in 2003, versus 8 percent in 1990. Asian firms have also become major suppliers for the African economies, with 22 percent of the African imports coming from Asia, the second region after the EU for African imports.

The trend is even sharper in the case of the Sub-Saharan economies, as the share of the Asian markets have now reached about a quarter of the total exports of Sub-Saharan Africa compared to 9 percent in the 1990s.

South-South trade in low cost products is also generating important solutions to the pressing challenge of providing the poor with access to essential drugs. LDCs are often the beneficiaries of this new dimension of south-south exchange. In terms of value, for example, 67 percent of UNICEF’s vaccine requirements for its expanded immunisation programme are produced in four Southern countries: India, Indonesia, Cuba and Brazil.

To further efforts in this area, ECA is keen on strengthening collaboration with ESCAP with a view to sharing country and institutional experiences on south-south cooperation. In this regard, I wish to pay tribute to my colleague Mr. Kim Hak-Su, Executive Secretary of ESCAP, present here in this meeting, for his steadfast commitment.

Mr. Chairman
Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests and Participants

African LDCs are making appreciable strides in their economic and social development. But there are still daunting challenges. We need to redouble our efforts in investing in human development- education, health, water and sanitation to help foster a productive work force; investing in agriculture, particularly in terms of helping small farmers increase productivity and break out of subsistence farming and hunger; investing in infrastructure including roads, power, communications, especially rural infrastructure, such as irrigation systems, storage and transport facilities and roads connecting villages to larger market centres, and mitigating the special difficulties faced by isolated communities; investing in governance to create and sustain the capable and accountable state; investing in export competitiveness and trade as instruments for poverty reduction and employment generation; investing in the youth as the future movers and shakers of Africa; investing in women as the untapped catalyst for progress and transformation in Africa; and investing in measures to combat HIV/AIDS.

ECA will always stand by you and accompany your efforts in meeting these challenges. It is also my desire to see the international community at large make special efforts in terms of significant aid flows and dismantling of market access bottlenecks to help unleash the trade potential of African LDCs in global markets.

Mr. Chairman
Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests and Participants

I thank you for your kind attention.