H.E Mr. Chhieng Yanara

Minister Attached to the Prime Minister

Secretary General, CRDB

TWG Network Retreat

28 February 2012

Closing remarks

Excellencies Chairs and Co-Chairs of Technical Working Groups

Lead Facilitators from TWGs and representatives from the development partner community

Representatives from the NGO community

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

After two full days of discussion and interaction, our meeting is now drawing to a close. I would like to thank each of you for your participation and dedication.

In my opening remarks yesterday I observed that “The only true purpose for our development partnership is to achieve results.” At the end of our meeting we therefore need to reflect on whether the last two days have strengthened our partnership and contributed to achieving better results.

With this in mind, I wish to use my closing remarks to show how some of the issues raised can be used to take our work forward.

First, we have talked a lot about the need to identify a clear set of results – and related actions and resources – to guide our work. I believe we made progress at our meeting in developing a common understanding of how a results framework should look and how they can be prepared. CRDB/CDC is therefore prepared to move forward and work with relevant Government ministries and interested development partners to set up a community of practice with a practical focus on developing results frameworks. These will be part of our support to country systems strengthening, ensuring consistency and complementarity with related reforms and our PBA efforts.

Second, we have discussed development effectiveness and what it means for our partnership. We listened to a lot of useful views on TWG performance that are relevant to our thinking on how partnership mechanisms can evolve. CRDB/CDC has already indicated that a review will take place in 2012 as part of our policy development work and we will use the Partnership and Harmonisation TWG to reflect on partnering issues and structure, including with civil society and links with the private sector.

In order to ensure that our meeting leads to robust follow-up action, we will now use the feedback provided at our meeting to prepare a report that is action-focused. We will indicate priorities according to the issues we have discussed as well as related to specific TWGs. Some of you have indicated that you wish to spend more time completing your TWG Review Templates and discussing with management and partners in Phnom Penh. This is agreeable – the objective of these review questions is to help your work and if giving more time will advance this objective then that is what we will do. Please send final completed questionnaires to my office by the end of next week. Individual questionnaires have also been developed to evaluate this workshop – please complete them and return them to my staff before you leave so that future events can learn lessons from this week.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

We are grateful for your inputs and insights. We can assure you that we will consider our own work and the support that we provide based on the conclusions from this workshop. Personally, I have been very impressed by the level of commitment and enthusiasm of all participants to an effective partnership and to achieving development results. I look forward to working with the Development Partner Lead Facilitator, his alternate, and the Partnership and Harmonisation TWG co-facilitators to consider further follow-up actions and priorities.

We are committed to results.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

I thank you once again for your hard work at our meeting. I am confident that it will lead us to success. I also wish to thank my staff at CRDB for their support in organizing and managing this meeting, as well as to the translator, who have done a very good job in ensuring effective communication.

Thank you to everyone for making this an effective meeting. I wish you all a safe journey back to Phnom Penh.