Opening Remarks

H.E Mr. Chhieng Yanara

Minister Attached to the Prime Minister

Secretary General, CRDB

 

TWG Network Retreat

Preah Sihanouk Province, 27 February 2012

 

- Excellencies Chairs and Co-Chairs of Technical Working Groups

- Lead Facilitators from TWGs

- Excellencies and Colleagues from development partner and NGO community

- Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

 

1.         I am very honored today and would like to extend my warm welcome to you all for sharing your valuable time to participate in today's TWG Network retreat. With my sincere appreciation, I would like to express my gratitude to all of you who will be staying with us for the next two days. In particular I wish to welcome Mr Putu Kamayana, Country Director of ADB, who is also here in his new capacity as the Lead Development Partner Facilitator. And also Mr Flynn Fuller, Mission Director of USAID, who has agreed to serve as his Alternate. I thank them both for agreeing to take on these additional functions and for their commitment to making a positive contribution to our development partnership. I look forward to working with both of you more closely during your terms in this important role.

 

2.         To begin with, let me make a few remarks on the functioning of our TWG network retreat. Today's retreat marks the seventh occasion on which we have met since the establishment of the TWG Network in late 2007. The Network opened its first meeting in January 2008 and since then the Network has regularly met for purposes of exchanging experience, conducting learning activities and discussing and agreeing on important exercises related to the role and functioning of Technical Working Groups.

 

3.         The functioning of the TWG Network has been supportive of the larger Government-development partner partnership mechanism including the process of preparing Joint Monitoring Indicators and monitoring implementation progress, identifying and agreeing on priorities on aid effectiveness and providing implementation support. In addition, the TWG Network has provided important capacity development support to TWGs in the implementation of policies and decisions by the RGC on aid effectiveness.

 

4.         The original idea of establishing a TWG Network was to provide a platform for government representatives in the TWGs for knowledge exchange and to support each other in their TWG work. Gradually participation has been extended and now we have representatives from development partners as well from NGOs participate in our retreat.

 

5.         In the course of their performance, the TWG Network has been recognized as an effective mechanism for implementation of the aid effectiveness agenda in Cambodia. The contributions by the TWG Network have been acknowledged for example in the Evaluation of Aid Effectiveness in Cambodia in 2010 and in various government reports such as the Cambodia Aid Effectiveness Report 2010 and the Cambodia Development Effectiveness Report 2011. Last year's meetings on PBAs and country systems provide a useful starting point and a foundation for this meeting.

 

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

 

6.         Our retreat today is taking place in a new development cooperation context. The Busan High Level Forum in November 2011 produced a consensus on an inclusive partnership by including emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil and other forms of development cooperation including South-South Cooperation and Triangular Cooperation. At the same time, the commitments of Paris and Accra have been reiterated to continue working to increase the effectiveness of development cooperation. It is important to keep in mind that the Busan agreement was not developed over three days of the Forum. But, it was the product of many years learning from the experience of implementation, including in Cambodia, which has been very active in the global dialogue since 2001. This is why and it is not surprising that our own priorities for our partnership – set out in the 2011 Development Effectiveness Report – are broadly consistent with the new global framework.

 

7.         The emphasis is placed on a broader notion of development effectiveness. We define development effectiveness in three ways:

 

  1. Promoting developmental impact in line with national priorities
  2. Ensuring sustainability
  3. Developing capacities and partnerships for all development actors

 

8.         The changing nature of development cooperation and the need to embrace a wider range of development actors – including South-South partners and the private sector - informs this new context for Cambodia's development agenda and the efforts by the Royal Government to strengthen cooperation with our partners. Reflecting on Cambodia's priorities and these global changes is the central theme of our Network meeting. Results from the discussion of the retreat will provide important inputs to the updating of the current policy framework and mechanism on development cooperation management. Effective development is mainly realized at the sector level and through reform programs, therefore ensuring the practicality of the new vision of partnership with the context of sectors and reform programs is of utmost importance. Our common objective is for a strengthened and effective partnership. This is one of three major themes for discussion during our meeting.

 

9.         In addition, we will also review progress in other areas of development effectiveness. Approaches that we have emphasized as vital include strengthening country systems and implementing PBAs as the main vehicle for promoting policy consistency, capacity development and effective implementation.

 

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

 

10.       Our major focus is results. The only true purpose for our development partnership is to achieve results. We therefore begin our meeting this morning by considering the evidence on results achieved to date by discussing the achievements and challenges recorded in the NSDP Mid-term Review. We will then refresh our memories on some of the approaches to managing for results so that we can consider the increased use of an integrated results framework that brings together the national, sectoral and project level work in a coherent manner, including with the JMIs. As we will hear later in our session on Busan, an important commitment made at the High-level Forum was the increased use of results frameworks. We feel these have great potential in Cambodia to strengthen and link together our results focus at national, sector and project level, in order to promote national ownership and alignment of all resources with national development priorities. These are priorities that we will continue to implement.

 

11.       Again I would like to acknowledge the importance of our joint efforts in strengthening our partnership mechanism, in particular in supporting the effective functioning of the TWGs. I would like to express my sincere thanks for participation so far of TWGs, especially TWG secretariats that have always worked hard to ensure the effective functioning of the TWGs. In particular for today's retreat, the financial support from the ADB and technical support from the Partnerships for Development Results project – UNDP, Australia, Canada and Sweden – these supports that have enabled our Network to come together. I would like to acknowledge their contributions.

 

12.       To conclude my remarks, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I strongly believe that our retreat will achieve all the expected outcomes. With this in mind, I would like to declare the retreat open.

 

Thank you for your attention!