Distinguished Chair, Mr President, Excellencies, delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

2006 will be remembered as the year in which we were offered the opportunity to achieve a step change in the impact of the UN’s development work. As a committed member of IFAD, the United Kingdom is proud that President Båge participated in the High Level Panel’s deliberations. We have benefited from this in being updated throughout the process and agree with the Prime Minister of Mozambique and others on the importance for developing countries of taking forward the report’s recommendations.

The UN has a core role at the centre of the international development system.  It is the only global forum for debating the most complex and challenging issues facing the world today. And it is the only forum for agreeing collective global action to address them. 

Its legitimacy, arising from its universal membership - as we see here at IFAD’s Governing Council - is unparalleled.  And this brings with it unique responsibilities.  It is only through a stronger United Nations that we can hope to address today’s interrelated global challenges  – on eliminating global poverty, on climate change and the environment, to name just a few.

So we must seize opportunities in 2007. There is unprecedented agreement about the Millennium Development Goals, the need for more rapid progress towards them and that a more effective multilateral system is central to achieving this.

IFAD has an important role to play. We welcome IFAD’s commitment to participating in the country pilots that are evolving from the Panel’s recommendations and look forward to IFAD’s continued proactive engagement, both at country level and here in Rome.

2006 was also an eventful year for IFAD itself, as it began to implement its Action Plan for improving development effectiveness in response to its Independent External Evaluation. We see the new Strategic Framework available here at the Governing Council and encourage IFAD to continue focusing on its objectives and working in partnership with others, complementing areas of expertise to achieve the impact towards which we all strive.

The United Kingdom is also pleased to support IFAD’s Action Plan through its Institutional Strengthening Project. We welcome the President’s commitment to transforming IFAD’s human resource management and stand ready to provide additional funds for aligning human and financial resources with strategic objectives.

We commend IFAD for producing all Action Plan deliverables on time so far and look forward to these translating into greater impact at the country level.

IFAD is a specialised agency with a unique and important mandate. The need to develop innovative solutions that can be replicated and scaled up by others cannot be underestimated. Combined with a strategy on innovation, effective knowledge management to capture systematically and disseminate lessons learnt will be crucial and we appreciate the process that IFAD has established to ensure quality in strategically prioritising activities to focus on results.

We began by considering global commitments to reaching the MDGs and how a more effective UN system would contribute towards that. We should also mention the international commitment to the debt initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. We support IFAD’s full participation in HIPC and welcome its access to the Trust Fund and do encourage full financing and implementation.

2006 was also the year that saw the recruitment of an entirely new senior management team and we are delighted to see the full team together here for the first time at the Governing Council. We particularly welcome the two newest members of the team due to take up their positions in March: Mr Enwanze as Vice President and Ms Mabutas as Assistant President for Finance and Administration. We look forward to working with them all and wish them every success in leading IFAD as it takes forward its challenging mandate of enabling the rural poor to overcome their poverty.