Your Excellency President Lennart Bäge,

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It’s my great pleasure to be here in Rome for the 31st session of the Governing Council of IFAD. On behalf of the Chinese government, I would like to extend our warm congratulations to IFAD on its 30th anniversary, and to express our appreciation to IFAD for its dedication to agriculture development and poverty reduction in China and the world.

As an international financial institution, IFAD was established in 1977 to combat hunger and malnutrition in response to global food crises. In the past 30 years, IFAD has firmly committed itself to the mission of poverty reduction and agriculture development, while constantly improving its philosophy of poverty alleviation and aid approaches.

It is worth noting that in recent years IFAD has implemented Action Plan to increase its development effectiveness, efficiency and relevance, embracing the recommendations of direct supervision on projects, independent external evaluation etc. All these efforts have produced good results that IFAD’s concessional loans and grants have become an important financial source for the world to fight against hunger and poverty, making IFAD an irreplaceable force in tackling global poverty.

IFAD’s 30 years of development coincides with 30 years of China’s reform and opening up. Over the past three decades, the Chinese government has taken a host of policy measures to promote the development of agriculture and rural areas as well as raise the living standard of farmers. We have adopted special supporting initiatives to targeted at the poor people and poverty-stricken areas to improve rural employment and productivity, and increase farmer’s incomes by various means. Based on its national conditions, China has explored its own approach of poverty alleviation, which is development-oriented, guided by government and widely participated by general public. In recent years, under the guidance of the people-oriented scientific outlook on development, the Chinese government has worked out a comprehensive national poverty reduction strategy with the strategic goal of building a new socialist countryside, further improving rural relief mechanism and minimum living allowance system for the rural disadvantaged households. We feel greatly encouraged that China’s 30 years’ achievement in poverty reduction is widely recognized.

Nevertheless, poverty reduction is still an arduous task for China and there is still a long way ahead of us. Out of a total population of 1.3 billion, 800 million are rural residents, many of which are poor. Measured by the World Bank’s poverty threshold of 1 dollar a day, China still has 135 million people living under the line. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly challenging to tackle the problem. In the poor regions, the poor people have little capacity to achieve self-development. Fundamental changes of backward visage are yet to be seen in some poverty-stricken areas.

It still demands years of unremittent efforts to reach the government’s goal of building a new socialist countryside and a moderately prosperous society in an all around way. Therefore the Chinese government will continue to strengthen the close cooperation with IFAD and other international organizations to further promote China’s poverty alleviation cause.

Mr. Chairman,

It is a shared responsibility for all countries to promote universal development, realize common prosperity, and eradicate poverty. Its success relies on joint actions of the international community. As a multilateral institution mandated in poverty reduction, IFAD has the obligation and an important role to play.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to make the following four proposals for the future operations of IFAD:

• Be more innovative in the poverty reduction efforts. Innovation is the key to ensure long-term vitality and prosperity of the institution. IFAD should further pay more attention to innovation in poverty-reduction theories, systems, technologies and management, particularly in performance-based evaluation and project supervision, and gradually improve the operation mechanism to achieve more effective management structure, and more standardized project management.
• Respect recipient countries’ rights to choose their own path of development and poverty alleviation, and strive for a harmonious integration of country ownership and IFAD’s development strategy. To eliminate poverty, it is critical for developing countries to make independent choices on development and poverty reduction approaches to suit their national conditions. Therefore, based on the recognition of long-term development needs of recipient countries, IFAD’s anti-poverty strategy should call for the harmonization between the country-owned initiative and its development strategy, further to increase the relevance of assistance and improve the quality and effectiveness of aid.
• Enhance experience exchanges and information sharing. IFAD should take a good review of the international experience it has gained from poverty alleviation activities, and identify some successful practice that could be replicated in other countries, thus providing valuable insights and references for the global cause of development and poverty reduction.
• Strengthen partnership with other international development agencies. IFAD should better coordinate and collaborate with the World Bank, regional development banks, and other international developments agencies of the UN system, particularly in the area of knowledge and experience sharing. Such cooperation will be conducive to sharpen the comparative edge, integrate resources and form synergy in the recipient countries’ strategic development framework, so as to maximize efficiency of the limited resources.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Chinese government will continue to strengthen the cooperation with IFAD, and make joint efforts with other countries for the realization of the MDGs and the elimination of global poverty and hunger.

I wish the conference a great success!