Opening Remarks
H.E Mr. Chhieng Yanara
Minister Attached to the Prime Minister
Secretary General, CRDB
TWG Network Retreat
- 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
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
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
7.
The emphasis is placed on a broader notion of
development effectiveness. We define
development effectiveness in three ways:
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
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
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! |