Excellency Mr. Chairperson,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen

First of all, on behalf of the Lao Delegation, I am once again honored to attend this Thirty-second Session of the Governing Council of IFAD. I would like to join the other distinguished delegations and also present my congratulations to the elected Chairperson and Vice-Chairs of this Year’s Session and take this opportunity to sincerely thank IFAD’s Organizing Committee for the excellent arrangements made for the meeting and for the warm hospitality extended to our Lao delegation.

May I also thank President Bage for his tireless efforts that have guided IFAD in honoring the institution’s commitment to enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty.

Mr. Chairperson,
Ladies and Gentlemen

This Year’s IFAD Governing Council Meeting is organized at a time when the Worldwide economic, financial and social turbulences that have started to seriously threatened our World Food Security some two years ago, are now discharging its worst impact to the life of more than a billion of poor in every corner of the World and especially in developing countries and jeopardizing even the very basic right to have a minimum food ration per day. The number of poor and of hungry people has significantly increased according to FAO reports.

This is unfortunately coupled with the increasing depletion of the already very limited world natural resources due to unsustainable exploitation of land and forest for producing energy crops.  Even though the price of oil has decreased to an important extent but competition for excessive land grab has not diminished in any part of the world. All these negative developments are at present considered as major challenges for the developing world to realize agreed common targets to addressing secure food supply for all and eliminate poverty as it was set in the World Food Summit Plan of Actions and the Millennium Development Goals.      

In the Lao PDR and for over two decades, thanks to the continued strong support provided by our Government and aid assistance from our development partners to the development of our agriculture sector, the Lao Agriculture Sector, generally speaking, is still in the possibility to record a steady and continuous growth since the country has achieved basic self-sufficiency in rice production in year 2000. This is a commendable achievement, taking into consideration that the country is under permanent threats in occurrence of natural disasters. The achievements made is due to a large extent to the benefits derived from significant and continued investments made in the past in expanding the area of irrigated rice agriculture; strong government support to develop grassroots’ extension systems directly responsive to raising productivity; especially in terms of provision of inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, small credit and new farming techniques and the continued policy support that brought about the active and collective contribution from the other economic and social sectors to assist in the development and the commercialization of the agriculture sector. Being part of ASEAN and the on-going dynamic regional economic integration, especially in terms of trans-boundary contract-farming arrangements and cross-border trade, very favorable conditions have been created in the last decade to develop the country’s agriculture economy. The increased demand in a few key agriculture produce and industrial crops in the region has been a catalyst for the Lao PDR to boost significantly its agriculture production, especially in the case of rice, maize, sugar cane, coffee, vegetables, cattle, rubber and a few energy crops such as jatropha and cassava.

The agriculture sector remains the greatest contributor to the Government’s food production and poverty reduction targets. Our rice production target for year 2010 is 3, 3 million tons or about 500kgs per head per year. In order to achieve the above mentioned targets, we have formulated short and long-term development policies and strategies to support concrete implementation of needed interventions within the frame of our national plans. However, the World economic crisis that we all are affected from is also beginning to have negative impacts to our agriculture sector, especially in the case of cross border trade that is in terms of supply of key imported inputs, namely fuel and fertilizers.

However, the complementarity in supply and demand for agricultural commodities and industrial products has helped to maintain a dynamic border exchange and help alleviate poverty in most of the poorer regions of the country. More over, rice price has remained relatively stable up until now which is due to the fact that Laos is still predominantly a subsistence agriculture-based economy and that Laos is self-sufficient in rice for almost a decade.

It is also important for our government to work closely with our development partners in order to win continued support needed to help achieve set production targets. To realize long-term sustainable food production and viable generation of bio-energy, Laos initiated programs to clearly delineating specific agricultural zones, in order to allow for the possibility of balancing investments in food and bio-energy crops. We are also working closely with our neighbors and development partners in realizing our forestry strategy that was laid down until Year 2020, our policy is sustainable use of our resources with a strong participation from local communities to co-manage existing forest resources. We believe that for Lao PDR this is one of the most appropriate strategy to address climate change.

Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates

Development experiences of over the past two decades in ASEAN and in our own country shows that developing countries have true ability and capacity to increase agricultural productivity by many folds but we need to join forces and institute more viable partnership schemes and mechanism among developed, developing nations and international institutions to assist each other in a more coordinated manner, ensuring consistency and continuity in established partnership programs. We are hopeful that the Accra Conference and the other related international gatherings to were held during last year would bring about the needed immediate and mid-term support that developing countries have been seeking for since long, especially in terms of giving full ownership and leadership in planning and managing coordinated aid programs for the benefits of their own people and their own future and also in terms of more viable trade regime, especially under the present World economic recession. The need is to work even more closely together and for mutual benefit.

Last but not least, our delegation would like to especially thank IFAD to continue to maintaining a very active role in the Lao PDR and in the Asean Region, even under this very difficult world financial ambiance. IFAD remains a model for Lao PDR in its contribution to help alleviating poverty.

More over, IFAD is also a good model in assisting our country to forge stronger cross-border technical and economic cooperation, especially in the ASEAN CLVM ( Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Myanmar ) group of countries. This has immediate positive impact to reducing poverty along the border areas, home of most poor of the region. I would especially thank IFAD to delivering a new pro-poor program aimed for the five Southern Provinces and its continued support to provide assistance in whatever way that would help our country to accelerate in its quest to eradicate poverty by 2020.

May I take this opportunity to present once again my best wishes to the Chair and co-chairs, to all distinguished delegates and wish for a very fruitful and productive meeting, especially in terms of agreeing on a common development agenda that would hopefully be of real substance and help to achieving secure food and livelihood security in real terms and especially in the developing world.  

Thank you