Intercontinental Hotel

17 December 2002

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Distinguished Guests,

Today, I have a great honor to participate in the opening of the Third National Poverty Forum organized by the Ministry of Planning in collaboration with UNDP. I would like to highly appreciate best efforts made by the Ministry of Planning and concerned Ministry for preparing the National Poverty Reduction strategy.

Even though, Cambodia gains peace and political stability but we are still poor among the Least. Developing Countries. By the statistic of the Ministry of planning, 36% of the population lives under poverty line. The Royal Government of Cambodia considers reducing and preventing poverty are the highest priority for the rehabilitation and development of the country. Poverty reduction will be achieved only if the fruits of economic growth are shared widely so that the poor could benefit ftom the growth. Therefore, The Royal Government of Cambodia is determined to ensure that its policies and strategy on poverty are based on pro-poor growth.

A socioeconomic development plan - the SEDPII - was formulated and approved by the Cambodian Parliament. Recently, the process of finalizing the first Cambodian National Poverty Reduction Strategy (NPRS) - is completed and forwarded to the Council of Ministers for approval at the end of this week. Another important instrument to assist in ensuring our policies focused on poverty of our policies is the localization of the Global Millennium Development Goals - the MDGs. Arriving at a set of localized and feasible MDGs for Cambodia constitutes a vital part of our NPRS.

The formulation of a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy obviously requires careful identification of priorities for the allocation of Government budgetary resources across sectors, and within sectors. All government agencies at all levels, and close collaboration with non-governmental institutions have to understanding the broad-based priorities. The Royal Government has given the duty for the preparation of the NPRS as well as the localization of the MDGs to the inter-ministerial body of the CSD - the Council for Social Development, chaired by H.E. Chhay Than, Minister of Planning.

The continuous monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of our policies focused on poverty is an extremely important task. Accurate and well-analyzed information from monitoring and evaluation must be made available to the implementers in order to provide them a basis for correction and decisions in the implementation process to achieve maximum poverty reduction.

Again, close cooperation and collaboration between all stakeholders are imperative to success. The monitoring activities in Cambodia have been rather fragmented and scattered so far. During the CG meeting in June it was agreed among all stakeholders that efforts would be made to create a mechanism for improving the linkage of monitoring system with each other. Therefore, it was agreed to develop one strong and efficient Poverty Monitoring and Analysis system for Cambodia - a CPMAS. To achieve good coordination, the Royal Government assigned this task to the inter-ministerial CSD, chaired by H.E. Chhay Than, Minister of Planning.

To establish a strong and efficient Poverty Monitoring and Analysis system is, as you all understand, a long-term undertaking. It needs to build on solid assessment of information needs, availability of precise data, and identifying data gaps to be filled. It also involves the building of national capacity to undertake our own Cambodian analysis of policy impact on poverty reduction.

In this regards, it gives me a great pleasure to follow the progress of the Project on Capacity Development for Poverty Monitoring and Analysis set up under the leadership of CSD and the Ministry of Planning and to attend the opening session of this Third National Poverty Forum. The two issues to be covered during this Third National Poverty Forum clearly demonstrate the progress of the on-going project. The process to localize the Millennium Development Goals will help identify clear and feasible targets and indicators on important goals in order to halve poverty by the year 2015. The discussion on the progress towards the development of a Poverty Monitoring and Analysis System for Cambodia - the CIPMAS - will help laying a strong foundation for efficient monitoring, analysis and evaluation of the Royal Government's efforts to implement its pro-poor policies. Poverty is very complicated and related to many sector include economic, social and cultural. No country could reduce all poverty but we should to deduce it in maximum. So the poverty reduction is a long way effort which we have to work together.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the UNDP and the Swedish Sida for providing technical and financial support for implementing this important project.

With these few words, I sincerely urge you all to make use of this day by providing your valuable contributions to these important tasks and by sharing your knowledge and experience from all levels of our society during the discussions. Your valuable contributions mean that you support the Royal Government in its commitment to achieving rapid poverty reduction. Through working together we will make Cambodia a prosperous country.

I wish you a fruitful day of intense and frank discussions.

Thank you!

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