Statement by Ambassador Matthew Wyatt,
UK Permanent Representative and Governor to IFAD

Mr Chairman,
Mr President,
Distinguished Governors,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure for me to address the Governing Council of IFAD on behalf of the UK for the first time.

IFAD has begun to implement a number of essential reforms following the Sixth Replenishment. These include a Performance Based Allocation System, a Results and Impact Management System, and importantly for the UK, because we believe IFAD should strengthen its relationships in the countries where it is most active, a Field Presence Pilot Programme. The UK commends the progress that has been made towards reforming IFAD over the last four years under President Båge’s leadership. We also commend the constructive way in which IFAD is responding to the Independent External Evaluation. This report is sobering. It shows that IFAD’s performance, while competent, is not yet excellent. A step change in IFAD’s performance is required if IFAD is to maximise its potential impact on the Millennium Development Goals, and particularly MDG 1 which calls for a halving of the proportion of people living on less than $1 per day and of those who are hungry.

The Independent External Evaluation recommends that IFAD prepare a strategy to influence policy at country and international levels. The UK agrees with this recommendation. To do this effectively IFAD should engage fully in on-going international efforts to enhance aid effectiveness, building on the key principles of the Rome Declaration of February 2003; these will be further developed in the High Level Forum in Paris later this month. The UK wants to see IFAD participating actively in the ongoing debate on how best to ensure that development agencies align what they do with country-owned strategies and harmonise the way they do it with other development partners. And we want to see IFAD working in ways that ensure that what IFAD does and the way IFAD does it are both fully in line with developing international best practice.

Another issue raised in the Evaluation relates to IFAD’s comparative advantage. What makes IFAD different from the other International Financial Institutions? What value does it add? The UK believes that the answer lies in IFAD’s focus on the poorest of the potentially productive poor, and its willingness and ability to innovate, to take calculated risks and to capture and disseminate knowledge of what does and does not work and thereby influence the policies of Governments and larger development partners such as the other International Financial Institutions. IFAD still has some way to go to fulfil this role. It will be crucial in the coming weeks and months for IFAD to build on the groundbreaking work that has been started with the Innovation Mainstreaming Initiative. The UK is providing up to $10 million to support this work and we are pleased by the results achieved so far. We look forward to the formation very soon of a Steering Group within IFAD to guide the Initiative, and also to seeing clear indicators developed so we can all measure the progress and impact of this initiative.

The Evaluation also recommends that IFAD adopt a new business model. This would require a radical restructuring of Programme Management Department, with the current Country Programme Manager model overhauled. Decentralisation of country-level staff, and delegation of decision-making authority to national level where programmes are sufficient to justify this, is a change fully supported by the UK. Delegation of authority to staff in-country is essential for effective delivery, and if IFAD is to engage effectively in national policy development, as we believe it should in countries where it has a large portfolio, it will require the continuous presence in those countries of high calibre staff.

The Evaluation also makes important recommendations for improving knowledge management. The UK agrees that this is a very important issue. IFAD needs to develop and implement a knowledge management policy as a matter of urgency. It also makes recommendations for building on the reforms in human resource management that are already underway. As the new Human Resource Policy is implemented we expect to see significant change in IFAD’s culture, and ways of working. Implementation will not be easy, but the UK shares the view of IFAD senior management that it is necessary. The UK is providing support for the Development Centre initiative. This is helping senior staff to identify their strengths and weaknesses and thereby improve their effectiveness as managers. This initiative is taking place across all three Rome-based agencies, and is an excellent example of cross-organisational learning and experience sharing.

The UK remains committed to supporting IFAD as it builds on the reforms already made. Together with IFAD staff, we have identified four specific areas of work in which the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) will provide capacity building assistance to IFAD to enable it to accelerate the pace of change. We expect to publish an Institutional Strategy shortly, which will provide full details of this support. We would wholeheartedly welcome other member countries that share our interest in these areas to join in with this work under the leadership of IFAD’s top management team. The four areas of focus are:

I. Development of a Knowledge Management policy;
II. Development of corporate planning tools;
III. Development of staff performance system;
IV. Enhanced country impact through improved alignment and harmonisation.

We look forward to the year ahead. 75% of the people in the world living in absolute poverty live in rural areas and IFAD’s vocation is to develop ways of helping as many of them as it can to secure sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families. No vocation is more noble than this. The direction of change for IFAD is clear; the challenge now is to make that change happen. For our part the UK is committed to continuing to support IFAD as it does so.

Thank you.

UK Delegation