The Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

 

Mr. Chairman, Dr. Moeketsi MAJORO, Distinguished Delegates, Representatives of ACP Regional Integration Organisations, Distinguished Guests, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen;

It is a great personal honour for me, and indeed a privilege, to welcome you all at the ACP House and to the third meeting of the ACP Senior Officials Responsible for Finance and Economic Affairs.

 I am grateful that you have accepted my invitation to come to Brussels, so that together we exchange views on how we can jointly map out a clear response strategy to leverage opportunities arising from our development cooperation arrangements and the various global initiatives.

Mr. Chairman,

In recent years we have witnessed growth in North-South and South-South partnerships. Let me, in this respect, thank the European Union for its continued and growing collective partnership with our ACP Group of States. Our appreciation also goes to other development partners who have collectively or individually supported the development effort in the ACP States and regions in many areas.

As we reach the apex of our commemoration of the thirtieth year of the founding of the ACP Group, we realise that like other regional groupings in the developing world, the ACP Group faces great opportunities and challenges the balance of which does impact on the Group's medium term development prospects. The opportunities include the renewed effort by the donor community to scale-up their development support.

As a result of the noble commitment by the Member States of the European Union to double their development aid budgets by 2010 we can now, for the first time, witness a growing consensus for reaching the 0.7% development aid target as a proportion of the national income in the developed countries. Though the United Nations Summit in September last year did not generate a rush of pledges for new aid and partnerships commensurate to the Monterrey experience of four years ago, the fact that the Summit agreed on the timeline for scaling-up development aid was a commendable achievement.

We also witnessed another historic demonstration of leadership by the G-7 Finance Ministers and the G-8 Summit. The G-8 Summit decision to double aid resources and to cancel the outstanding external debts of countries eligible for debt relief under the HIPC Initiative was very much welcomed by the ACP Group.  The Boards of Directors of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank subsequently reaffirmed the debt cancellation decision.

The ACP Group should capitalize on these developments and shore up its comparative advantage to attract and absorb the ultimate increase in resource flows.

However, we are all aware that these favourable global initiatives are slowly being degraded by the protracted rise on the prices of oil. For most of the ACP countries the new price levels for oil will pose medium- to long- term economic difficulties, and possibly erode some of the attained socio-economic gains.

Mr. Chairman,

On the bilateral front, the successful revision of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement provides us with the opportunity to strengthen the ACP-EU development cooperation in many areas. After protracted negotiations on the financial perspectives, the Summit of the European Union in December agreed on a larger 10^th EDF for the ACP countries for the period 2008-2013. The 10^th EDF is broadly in line with the European Union's global commitments to double its development aid by 2010, though falling short of the estimated financing requirements for the ACP States to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

We have also witnessed the resolve by the European Union to redefine its development cooperation strategies with the ACP Group. In this pursuit, the European Union has recently developed separate cooperation strategies for Africa and the Caribbean, and is currently designing a development cooperation strategy for the Pacific. These are in addition to the Cotonou Partnership Agreement that was revised just a year ago.

It is evident that the EU Strategy for Africa lays down avenues to forge a Euro-African Pact to accelerate Africa's development. The strategy is a Cotonou-Plus, both in regional coverage and content of cooperation, and is broadly in line with our collective support for the initiatives of the European Union and those of the international community to prioritize Africa's development.

The recently released development cooperation strategy for the Caribbean covers less areas of focus, thus meeting the stated objectives of concentrating development aid. However, the strategy attempts to shift the balance of wider regional integration in the direction of Latin and Central American countries.

Mr. Chairman,

Let me point out that there is a growing consensus within the Group that the development strategy documents at hand pose serious questions on the medium- to long- term implications of these regional initiatives to the broader ACP-EU cooperation. Though the build-up of parallel partnerships should be encouraged to help countries and regions better position themselves in the global economic space, the ACP Group should be mindful that these new regional development initiatives are not advanced at a great cost of degrading our largest North-South Partnership.

On trade cooperation, the current negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that are targeted to replace the non-reciprocal trade cooperation in January 2008 possibly will pose the greatest challenge. The rhetoric here is that the EPAs will be instruments for development. However, the experience of the ACP regions that had early on offensively pursued negotiations on development and regional integration subjects shows that their two-year effort generated no tangible results on these areas of great interest to all ACP States and regions.

This may further signify that as negotiations advance to areas of offensive interest to the European Union, namely market access, the development dimension of EPAs will suffer as a result of the European Union's potential aggressive ambitions on the market access pillar.

Mr. Chairman,

We consider these issues to be critical in leveraging our bilateral and wider development cooperation, present and future. Therefore, as we get into the business of your meeting, you will find that they do constitute the main focus of your agenda and that of the Ministers.

In fostering the dialogue with our development partners on these issues, we have scheduled a joint session with the Officials of the European Commission both at your meeting and at the Ministerial. Likewise, we have also scheduled a joint session at the Ministerial with Representatives of the International Financial Institutions. The latter arrangement could not be replicated at your meeting because of logistical difficulties.

Mr. Chairman,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen;

Permit me to conclude my statement with an emphasis that the ACP Group stands to enhance and strengthen its bilateral development cooperation with the European Union and, in a broader context, with other development partners.

At the Secretariat we are reorganizing to better rise to these opportunities and other challenges. We have set up a new Department responsible for Development Finance and Intra-ACP Programming. The new department, though still quite small in terms of staff complement, will enable the Secretariat to better respond to issues related to the ACP-EU development finance cooperation and those at the global level that are of critical relevance to the development of our countries.

Though the agenda before you is heavy, let me assure you that with the support of my colleagues and the Chairman's stewardship, I am confident your meeting will smoothly cover all issues on your agenda, adopt a common position and agree on a response strategy to the development financing opportunities and challenges facing the ACP Group.

I welcome you again to the ACP House.

And,

I do thank you for your very kind attention.