Statement by Mr. M.R.Keegel,  Charge d’ Affaires  ,  at the  Plenary Meeting on the 
High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development,
 23rd – 24th March 2010, UNHQ, New York

Mr. President,
My delegation extends its complements to you on behalf of the Government of Sri Lanka for convening this meeting and express confidence in your able leadership in guiding the deliberations of this High-Level Plenary meeting. My delegation associates itself with the statement made by Yemen on behalf of the G-77 & China.

Mr. President,
Our common endeavour to achieve sustainable development is hampered by various challenges, including numerous global crises that span from food, energy, climate to finance and the economy. Our leaders in Monterrey in 2002 endorsed a document that prescribed a holistic and multilateral approach in eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development, followed by a review process in 2008 in Doha.

The East Asian financial and economic crisis in 1997 set the stage for this dialogue on financing for development. At that time the current global economic meltdown was nonexistent, nonetheless Monterrey endorsed multilateral financial institutions to anchor well designed surveillance and early warning systems in order to identify and prevent potential crises. The Monterrey Consensus and the Doha Review were benchmarks of our united efforts to address the macroeconomic dimensions of international financial, monetary and economic architecture, as well as eradication of poverty and the promotion of long-term development. Revisiting the primary underlined principles in Monterrey and Doha today is, therefore,  more valid and relevant in the context of current global complexities.

Developing countries are extremely vulnerable to the negative effects of the multiple global crises. We note with satisfaction the increase of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and other forms of traditional development assistance in real terms to help developing countries since Monterrey, but a significant part of this flow is allocated for debt relief and humanitarian assistance, thus it has a minimum qualitative impact on development. The full materialization of the ODA commitment of 0.7% GNP by donor countries is therefore necessary to further enhance the capacity of the recipients.

Developing countries, particularly middle and lower middle income countries, that are beyond major ODA thresholds have to primarily depend on external trade, FDI and bi-lateral and multilateral financial borrowings. The reliance of these countries on the Bretton Woods Institutions has in effect become inevitable. But their ceaseless quest for development is incapacitated in the absence of coherence and transparency in the international financial architecture and the failure of the multilateral trade negotiations to achieve a development oriented early outcome. The restructuring of the multilateral financial architecture, therefore,  is a primary need.

Our exposure to international financial institutions is tied to harsh pro-cyclical conditionality, accompanied by non-economic political bargains. Against such a backdrop, the aspirations echoed in Monterrey to strengthen the UNs leadership in promoting development and enhance coordination, coherence and effectiveness between the World Bank, IMF and WTO need not be re-emphasized.

Mr. President,
The Monterrey Consensus was complementary to the Millennium Development Goals.  We have dedicated our scarce resources in pursuing  the internationally agreed development goals, including the MDGs, while successful results were achieved in the areas of health, education and gender by some countries despite many odds. However, the much delayed progress in the MDG-8 to develop a global partnership for development has been unsupportive towards those positive trends. In the absence of sustainable financial inflows, the hard earned achievements by poor countries are in peril, not only delaying further progress but also reversing the process in some cases. Over one billion hungry people, around the globe, stand witness to our fundamental failures.

Mr. President,
Sri Lanka, as a lower middle income country has firmly held on to  a policy of social welfare where we have since independence, provided free education from primary to University level, free healthcare and nutritional programmes for children resulting in our reaching the MDG goal of universal primary education and gender equality and empowerment.  We have achieved a literacy rate of 93%.  These development goals have been achieved by holding firm on to traditions of democratic governance and transparency in public expenditure, where the people’s welfare takes priority despite repeated internal-external blows enhanced by a devastating Tsunami in 2004 and the internal conflict that ended last year.

Our President (H.E. Mahinda Rajapaksa) was given a renewed mandate at the Presidential Election in January this year to continue implementing his vision for the country’s rapid economic development. The ‘The Northern Spring and Reawakening of the East’ programmes were launched to bring accelerated development for the people, who lost these opportunities in the provinces directly affected by decades of conflict. The key initiatives introduced by the Government to promote rural development include the establishment of Dairy and Medicinal Herb Cultivating Zones/Villages, Rehabilitation of Irrigation Works, Setting up of Industrial Townships, Community Managed Water Supply Schemes and Rural Electrification, IT Centres and Rural Infrastructure Development.  The objective of these programmes is to economically empower rural families and to stem the drift to the big cities.  Whilst we continue to rely on traditional sources of borrowing for our development programmes, proper domestic fiscal management has also ensured that we set apart a significant proportion of public expenditure from our national budget for development, thus ensuring that we do not rely entirely on external funding for these programmes. Our home-grown, pro-poor people-oriented development strategies have proved to be successful.

Our large, mainly female expatriate workforce maintains stable remittances amidst the economic crises due to their minimum exposure to business cycles.  The country’s policy support enabled the rural agriculture sector to absorb the workforce that lost employment in the garment sector in the wake of market downturn. What we fear most is the hard earned gains slipping out of our hands in a turbulent international environment amidst ripples caused by man-made and natural disasters.

Mr. President, we hope the deliberations here give added impetus to the call for collaborative international efforts to address the challenges faced by all of us in the developing world and renew focus on the implementation of our common agenda as agreed in Monterrey, Doha and at other multilateral fora.  

Thank you, Mr. President.