Mr. Chairman,
Mr. President,
Honourable Governors,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour for me to be here to commemorate with you the quarter century of IFAD’s existence – a quarter century, which was witnessed IFAD growing and maturing as a premier development finance institution for rural poverty alleviation. Pakistan was instrumental in the creation of IFAD and I have come here today to reaffirm our support to IFAD, to its mandate and to its operations. From our experience we have found IFAD’s work to be innovative and do not involve hard conditionalities. It is therefore, ideally placed to meaningfully contribute to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr. Chairman, Pakistan is tackling its poverty issues through a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy developed as part o the PRSP process. We are in a transitional stage. Democracy has been restored in the country and a new government under the leadership of Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has commenced work. Our Government attaches a very high priority to Agriculture Development and Poverty Alleviation. This should be understandable as Pakistan’s poverty profile has a strong rural bias. Up to 65% of our people obtain their livelihood from agriculture and no meaningful poverty reduction strategy can be formulated without placing the agriculture sector at the centre-stage. The main elements of the strategy are:

i) Increased availability of water for agriculture;
ii) Ensuring farmer’s access to international prices of their produce;
iii) Organized development of non-farm sub-sector, particularly livestock and fisheries;
iv) Improved access to land both through formal through distribution of available state lands;
v) Reduction in vulnerability to shocks through a set of social safety net initiatives

Mr. Chairman allow me to congratulate Mr. Lennart Bage, for the successful completion of the Sixth Replenishment Consultations, which was resulted in the highest replenishment target since the original. It is undoubtedly a vote of confidence in IFAD’s relevance to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
Mr. Chairman, IFAD’s interventions are in many ways path breaking and without conditionalities. These are IFAD’s strengths; it is incumbent to fortify and build on these strengths. Some policy issues emanating from the Sixth Replenishment Consultation are still outstanding which have the potential of impacting adversely on the character of IFAD. The consideration of a performance based allocation system is one such issue. It is my Government’s view that “need” should remain the dominant consideration in resource allocation decisions. We must also protect the regional basis of resource distribution.

Mr. Chairman, it has been our consistent view that IFAD cannot meet the cost of the Debt Initiative for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries through its internal resources without affecting its lending programme. While we are thankful to many donors who are making dedicated contributions for this purpose, we continue to maintain that resources for HIPC-DI must be an additionality.

Mr. Chairman, though not directly emanating from the consultations, there has been some discussion on governance matters as well. My government believes that a more representative beneficiary participation is essential to maintain a healthy, viable and responsive IFAD. We therefore fully support the initiative to enhance participation of developing countries in the deliberations of the Executive Board and its subsidiary bodies.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, while welcoming the establishment of the Sixth Replenishment Consultation we had pledged to continue our support to IFAD. The events of 9/11 and their aftermath have in many ways adversely impacted Pakistan’s political, economic and social circumstances. Our partnership in the coalition against terror has been at a high economic cost to the country. Nevertheless I am proud to state that we would live up to our assurance and contribute USD 2 million to the Sixth Replenishment of IFAD resources; a contribution not entirely justified given our own economic circumstances but fully reflective of our confidence in IFAD.

Thank you.