Check against delivery


 Nineteenth Meeting of the

Government-Development Partner Coordination Committee (GDCC)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 26 September 2012

 

Endorsement of the Joint Monitoring Indicators

 

H.E. Chhieng Yanara

Minister attached to the Prime Minister

Secretary General CRDB/CDC

Royal Government of Cambodia

 

 

    -    Excellency Deputy Prime Minister, Chair of the GDCC

    -    Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

  1. Thank you for the opportunity to present the 2012 Joint Monitoring Indicators for the endorsement of the GDCC.
     

  2. Please allow me to begin by acknowledging the efforts of many people in this room today: TWG Chairs, lead development partners, TWG secretariat staff and technical staff of development partner agencies. The 2012 JMI exercise has been the most consultative, participatory and thorough of any JMI exercise since we began this joint initiative in 2004. There is an expression that “the process drives the product”, which I believe is appropriate in this case as our combined efforts have resulted in a high-quality results framework to guide our development partnership over the next two years.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

  1. Our task this morning is to endorse the JMIs that have already been negotiated at TWG level and signed-off by the respective Chairs and Lead Development Partners. Before we do this, however, I wish to briefly do two things. First, to highlight some observations of the JMI preparation process that I believe are important to the implementation and monitoring phase. Second, to think about how we can use the JMIs to look beyond these immediate development priorities to strengthen systems that promote results-based programming and monitoring in our development partnership.
     

  2. First, the JMI development process. My first observation is that we gave ourselves sufficient opportunity to review, learn and apply lessons from the 2010 JMIs. A paper was prepared at the end of May to outline the entire process and was discussed here at CDC by Government and development partners on 14 June. Next, it is clear that most TWGs displayed significant leadership and partnership so that there was a sincere effort to jointly identify a meaningful development result that was of high priority to all parties. Third, the technical quality of the JMIs – in the form of a results framework that combines a high level of ambition with a focus on realistic result-setting and monitoring – was enhanced by holding a dedicated JMI workshop at the end of last month. For most TWGs, the participation in this event at a senior level by both Government and development partners was highly encouraging.
     

  3. This level of participation and commitment brings me to my second point. Where do we go from here? Clearly, TWGs now need to implement the identified activities and to ensure that the specified partnering arrangements are fully implemented. Our longer-term focus, however, must be to build on the progress we have made on both technical and managerial aspects of the JMIs in the past months.
     

  4. Many ministries and agencies are now well positioned to improve and elaborate their results frameworks so that these robust results-based approaches to management become more routine, not only the preserve of the JMIs. For development partners – who frequently observe the need to develop and use country systems – I highlight this as a clear opportunity and I urge you to support your Government counterparts to develop these capacities and to use these systems.
     

  5. As we look forward to preparing the Development Cooperation and Partnerships Strategy – which we will discuss later this morning – the JMI partnering actions that have been identified by each TWG as part of this JMI exercise will also help us to ensure that the practices we promote in the Development Cooperation and Partnerships Strategy are those that are relevant to supporting effective development at sector level. Our analysis of these partnering actions shows that priority development effectiveness actions fall into three main areas: (1) efforts to strengthen partnership and engagement with other actors; (2) actions to strengthen planning and budgeting processes; and (3) priorities related to capacity development and strengthening national systems, including for monitoring. These actions will therefore feature prominently in the revised Development Cooperation and Partnerships Strategy and will inform the future outreach work and support provided by CRDB/CDC.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

  1. Finally, as we look toward the production of the next NSDP and its associated monitoring system, we will need more effective routine monitoring arrangements that can monitor progress on a range of goals across the whole of Government. In addition to helping us to reach the 20 goals identified in the JMI matrix, I believe the legacy of these JMIs can be to help us to go much further in embedding results-based approaches in all of our work. I believe we must make a concerted effort together to make this our objective.

H.E Deputy Prime Minister and GDCC Chair, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your kind attention.