Mr. Chairman,
Mr. President,
Ladies and gentlemen,

The world economy is slowly recovering, yet its foundation is still fragile, the recovery process is uneven, and many destabilizing factors still exist. The international financial crisis and the persistent food price increase have exacerbated global poverty and hunger, thus making it more difficult to fulfill our tasks of global poverty reduction and development and posing severe challenges to the achievement of the MDGs as scheduled. As a specialized agency of agricultural development and rural poverty reduction of the United Nations, IFAD should fulfill its mandate and adopt more targeted and effective measures to help developing countries address challenges occurred in the process of agricultural and rural development and actively advance the international poverty reduction agenda.

Hereby, I would like to raise three proposals:

Firstly, mobilizing more resources to meet the challenges of global poverty reduction and development. According to FAO, there were still 925 million people in hunger in 2010, accounting for 16% of the total world population and lagging far behind the target of the MDGs. The recent food price surge has further exacerbated poverty in developing countries and even led to social unrest. As such, the international community should put realizations of the MDGs as the top priority and mobilize more resources to help developing countries, in particular the least developed countries develop economy and reduce poverty. We also hope that developed countries can fulfill their financial commitment, substantially increase their share of ODA in GNI, and actively support the 9th replenishment of IFAD so as to effectively increase input in international poverty reduction and agricultural development.

Secondly, defining strategies, highlighting priorities and increasing institutional effectiveness. As IFAD is now developing a new strategic framework, we hope that the new strategic framework and related policy reforms can further strengthen IFAD’s mandate of poverty reduction and rural development, thus building IFAD into a specialized poverty-reduction organization with clear strategies, definitive goals, focused priorities and efficient operations. We believe that IFAD should concentrate its limited resources on such areas as rural infrastructure development, agricultural technology development and application, small-scale farm development and capacity building for rural impoverished population, and promote sustained investment in agricultural development and poverty reduction in developing countries.

Thirdly, deepening South-South cooperation and knowledge cooperation, thereby promoting innovation in global poverty reduction. South-South cooperation and knowledge cooperation serve the needs of developing countries, while promoting reform and development of IFIs as well. We hope that IFAD could build on its comparative advantage and further promote south-south cooperation. On the one hand, we expect IFAD to constantly distill and disseminate best experiences and practices of developing countries in project implementation, and draw upon development approach and model tailored to developing countries. On the other hand, we expect IFAD to incorporate South-South cooperation into its long-term strategic framework, and actively build a high-level policy dialogue and cooperation platform with broad influence for developing countries, and increase the effectiveness of South-South cooperation. China is willing to work with IFAD to further explore the way of promoting South-South cooperation and jointly advance the development of the international poverty reduction agenda.

Mr. Chairman,

China has scored significant achievements in promoting poverty reduction and development. But we are still a developing country and we have 150 million people living below the poverty line set by the United Nations. We are still faced with such problems as large-scale poverty, unbalanced development and unsteady poverty reduction outcome. In line with the 12th Five-Year Programme for China’s Economic and Social Development and the new ten-year China Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development Programme, the Chinese government will double its effort in rural poverty reduction, improve pro-agriculture and pro-farmer policies, accelerate agricultural modernization and improve the living standards of farmers. In this process, we are willing to further strengthen cooperation with IFIs including IFAD and learn best practice of poverty reduction from other countries. At the same time, China is willing to share with other developing countries our experience of agricultural development and rural poverty reduction, thus contributing to world poverty reduction and common development.

Thank you.

19 February 2011