Mr. Chairman,
Your Excellencies，
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to be here in Rome for the 32nd session of the Governing Council. I would like to thank the Italian Government for its hospitality.

Let me start be expressing our sincere appreciations for President Bage. Over the past eight years, under your strong leadership and with your faithful commitment, IFAD has made impressive achievements in helping the poor for a better off life.

IFAD is now on the right track to enhance its efficiency and effectiveness.

Mr. Bage, we thank you for your contributions and wish you all the best in the future! I would also wish the president’s successor a great success in his work in the years to come.

Right now, the unprecedented financial tsunami has swept the globe and dumped the world economy into crisis. The turmoil has not yet hit the bottom, and it is hard to predict what further damage it may cause.

According to the World Bank’s prediction, the growth rate of the developing world in 2009 will decline from 6.4 percent in 2008 to 4.5 percent, and every percentage drop will drive 20 million more people into poverty. The current crisis is jeopardizing our progress in poverty reduction. The poorest countries and people suffer the most. In such a challenging time, we should not divert our efforts to fight against poverty while coping with the crisis.

To this end, China would like to work closely with the international community to mitigate the severe impact of the financial crisis on the poor by increasing our input to global poverty reduction. Last September at the U.N. High-Level Meeting on MDGs, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao declared that China would contribute 30 million US dollars to FAO for establishing a trust fund, which is to promote agriculture development.

Two months ago, China pledged 22 million US dollars to IFAD in the 8th Replenishment.

At the same time, as a large developing country with 1.3 billion people, among which more than 700 million living in the countryside, China must do its own things well, particularly in the area of rural and agricultural development.

This will be the greatest contribution China can make to the international community. To grapple with the financial meltdown, the Chinese Government has adjusted its macroeconomic policy, and unveiled a series of measures to keep stable and relatively fast growth. In the 4-trillion-RMB economic stimulus package for the next two years, about 370 billion RMB, or 54 billion US dollars, has been allocated to improve rural infrastructure and farmers’ well being. We hope that these measures would help stabilize grain output and increase farmers’ income, thus creating favorable conditions for sustainable economic development.

Mr. Chairman,

This annual session is of special significance, because the role of IFAD has never been so important to developing countries against the backdrop of the current situation.

We are happy that the 8th Replenishment has achieved an unprecedented 67 percent increase, the largest ever in IFAD’s history.

This is a remarkable success for IFAD. But how to direct our resources into the priority areas and use the funds in a more efficient way, so as to further improve the development effectiveness, IFAD still has a lot more to do.

In this connection, I would like to suggest the following:

First, staying focused. The economic crisis is pushing more people into poverty. To focus on increasing smallholder productivity, output and incomes, IFAD can do its part to avoid the economic crisis falling into humanitarian crisis. IFAD should intervene more promptly and boldly than ever before, especially in the poorest countries and regions. More efforts should be made to popularize agricultural technology and resources management models, which will enhance food production in a short period of time.

It is also critical to help to create off-farm job opportunities to increase the poor’s incomes.

Second, reinforcing the ownership.

Country ownership is a precondition for higher development effectiveness.

IFAD should build the capacity of its own staff to promote country ownership in the IFAD operations, and to ensure that the IFAD’s programmes and projects are driven by the recipient countries themselves.

Third, strengthening the partnership.

IFAD should adopt a more systematic approach to partnerships, and work more closely with the developing countries and other international development agencies including the UN sister agencies in Rome. Only by strengthening partnerships with other stakeholders, can IFAD improve its effectiveness and efficiency, scale up knowledge cooperation, and mobilize more resources to create the enabling environment needed to achieve the MDGs.

Last but not least, deepening the reform. We applaud IFAD’s progress in the delivery of the Action Plan to Improve Development Effectiveness in the past two years, while noticing that more diligence is needed in some areas, especially in the institutional and human resources reform. IFAD needs innovation, flexibility, skilled workforce and more diversified staff to achieve its ambitious agenda and expand its programme of work.

Mr. Chairman,

The challenges ahead are real and serious.

But as long as we work together in strong determination, we are confident that we would succeed in achieving our goals!

Thank you