Mr. Chairperson,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Governors,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is indeed a great pleasure for me to be here in Rome to attend this Twenty-ninth Session of IFAD Governing Council and to convey greetings and best wishes from His Majesty King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev for the success of this meeting. I feel greatly privileged today to speak in this august gathering that provides an important forum for discussing the issues of rural poverty and food insecurity facing us. At the very outset Mr. Chairperson, I would like to express my heart felt congratulations to you personally for your well deserved election to the Chair of this Session.

Mr. Chairperson,

Amidst the unfulfilled commitments pledged in the past and rapidly unfolding dimensions of the poverty problems of the present, the world community has renewed its commitments with much resolute intentions in the UN Millennium Summit. Dishearteningly, the subsequent pace of progress towards achieving the time-bound goals of halving hunger and extreme poverty is not encouraging either. This situation persists in a world where there exist ample technical and financial capacities to feed its entire population; and in a world where the reaffirmed international willingness to contribute has been revealed time and again. What impedes the progress then? It is in the light of this irony that, we need to examine the lapses in our commitments and commit to overcome them. What we need today is to work collectively towards forging a just international order wherein the access to the increased production, technical capability, real resources, and the opportunities of trade are equitably distributed among different regions, countries and population groups. Most importantly, perhaps, we need to focus strategies of our work plan to the specificities of the target group.

In this connection, we would like to welcome the outcomes of the United Nations World Summit, 2005 as well as the Gleneagles meeting of the   Group of Eight countries that recognized the urgency for concrete actions and additional efforts including the new instruments for debt reductions of poor countries and commitments to a large increase in Official Development Assistance. In this regards, we would like to take this opportunity to  reiterate our constant urge to developed countries to come closer to the so far unfulfilled targets. Likewise, the developing world has pinned high hopes on the successful conclusion of the Doha Development Round of trade negations. We urge the developed countries to come forward to conclude the round sooner than later, and in  the closest spirit of the Round -- trade for development.

At the national level Mr. Chairperson, Nepal's current 10th five year plan -- that stands basically as  the national poverty reduction strategy paper and has been aligned to the goals of the Millennium Development Declaration -- has vowed to stress poverty alleviation as the sole and overriding objective. Sustainable, rapid and broad based economic growth with targeted programmes of safety nets and social mobilization are the main development strategies that the plan has emphasized.  Agriculture sector has been recognized the largest source for broad based growth which is to be achieved through effective implementation of the 20 Year Agriculture Perspective Plan (APP) launched since 1997. The recent National Agriculture Policy 2004 outlines policy frameworks for achieving APP targets and for rapid trickle of the growth dividend to the poor and subsistence sections of the farming community.

Mr. Chairperson, we have been able to experience remarkable reduction in poverty by 11 percentage points from 42 percent in 1996 to 31 percent in 2004, though there remains much to be done to bridge the disparity in incidence of poverty between rural and urban communities and disparity among various social groups.

Unfortunately, the terrorist activities have coexisted and have been increasingly undermining these achievements and posing serious threat of thwarting it. While the agriculture sector has been generally surviving the conflict,  it has started becoming the target of direct assault of terrorism lately, thereby shaking the very resilience of  rural communities. The present government, therefore, accords utmost priority to restoring peace in the country so that development efforts and past progress could be brought back to track.

We have been facing the compelling urgency of more directly addressing the food and income needs of marginal farmers, women and other vulnerable sections of society. What is more alarming is the fact that the ongoing state of conflict tend to digress our attentions and efforts elsewhere in the areas of overall security and safety with compelling urgency. We are equally feeling pressure on our resources to the areas of rehabilitation of victims of terror and internally displaced people as well as rebuild destroyed infrastructure.

Moreover, the recent needs assessment has estimated that the financial resources required for implementing hunger/agriculture intervention package of our MDGs would be considerably higher than the government's current budgetary allocations. The gap implies a considerable increase in present level of financial support by our external development partners.

Mr. Chairperson,

May I take this opportunity to call upon IFAD for more direct and expanded engagement in agricultural sector in Nepal.  In this connection, I am happy to learn that IFAD is in the process of updating its country strategy for rural poverty reduction in Nepal. It is hoped that this strategy will put adequate emphasis on high-value agricultural production, value-addition and marketing. Rapid expansion of high-value agricultural production in relatively accessible areas, besides remittance income, was an important factor for significant poverty reduction in the country in the last decade, despite the conflict situation.

I am, likewise, glad to know that IFAD has recently approved a pilot programme on Local Livelihoods for Mid-Western Nepal, and that this programme has been aligned to the north - south corridor development approach, as articulated in His Majesty's Government's agricultural policy. I would like to urge IFAD to work with His Majesty's Government of Nepal to replicate and upscale this approach in wider geographic area, based on successful implementation of this pilot programme. I would like to reassure the full commitments of His Majesty's Government of Nepal to provide full support in jointly developing and implementing such programmes in the country.

Finally, may I conclude with the best wishes for the grand success of this Conference.

Thank you all for your kind attention.