EurOrient | Mr. Ron Nechemia Opening Remarks to Asia Capital Forum – On the Accession of the Mid-Terms Review of the Millennium Development Goals: Investing in Development, Nan Chang, China

 Speech by Mr. Ron Nechemia

The United Nations Millennium Project Report “Investing in Development – A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals” outlines a comprehensive strategy for combating global poverty, hunger and disease. A blue-ribbon team of 265 of the world’s leading development experts have proposed a package of scores of specific cost-effective measures that together could cut extreme poverty in half and radically improve the lives of at least one billion people in poor developing countries by 2015.

In the past seven short years, the eight Millennium Development Goals derived from the Millennium Declaration have transformed the face of global development cooperation. The broad global consensus around a set of clear, measurable and time-bound development goals has generated unprecedented, coordinated action, within the entire international development community, the United Nations system, the Bretton Woods institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the EurOrient Financial Group, but also within the wider donor community and, most importantly, within developing countries themselves.

Millions of lives, and the hopes of billions, rest on the implementation of Millennium Development Goals and other pledges to fight poverty, disease, illiteracy, inequality, and on development in the years ahead.

As the United Nations prepares for the mid-term review of the Millennium Declaration, a major breakthrough is needed if the 2015 targets are to be met. Developing countries must fulfill their commitments, as set out in the Millennium Declaration and the Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Financing for Development, to reallocate and mobilize more international and domestic resources, reform institutions to suit national priorities, and adopt effective, nationally owned economic and social policies that can provide a spur to economic growth.

            China has grown rapidly since 1978, when it began to reform. Over the past 27 years, it has shifted from a centrally-planned to a market economy, maintained GDP growth of about 9 percent per year, and lifted 400 million people out of poverty. Considerable progress has also been made in implementing the structural reform agenda and achieving the commitments made during China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. With a population of 1.3 billion, China recently became the world’s fourth largest economy and third largest trading nation.

Even so, China remains a developing country, with GDP per capita about $1,740 and more than 135 million people living on less than $1 a day—mostly in rural areas in the lagging inland provinces. It also faces daunting challenges in maintaining rapid growth; managing the resource demands and environmental consequences of growth; and addressing the resulting inequalities in income and opportunity, which could otherwise undermine the consensus needed to undertake growth-oriented policy reforms

Substantial, unprecedented progress is being made by China in terms of reaching theMillennium Development Goals, “An estimated 400 million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty, and in some cases, China is even 13 years ahead of the Millennium Development Goals target. We therefore expect China to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

However, China can also make crucial contributions to ensure other countries achieve theMillennium Development Goals. Investing in Development shows that despite these achievements, China still has 102 million people below the poverty line, and faces challenges in meeting the Goals for gender equality, HIV/AIDS, access to clean drinking water, and environmental sustainability.

The Millennium Development Goals are still technically feasible in China and in the poorest countries, but the window of opportunity is rapidly narrowing and the political will remains largely absent. The mid-term review of the Millennium Declaration provides potentially the last realistic opportunity to take the necessary steps to accelerate the enormous momentum of the last seven years to meet the Goals. We must seize this opportunity.

We must keep working with determination on the tough issues on which progress is urgent but has not yet been achieved. Because one thing has emerged clearly from this process on which we embarked seven years ago: whatever our differences, in our interdependent world, we stand or fall together.

China can make enormous contributions to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed targets for halving extreme poverty in its many forms by 2015, including helping to lead the global fight against malaria.

          It is my whish to see in Asia Capital Forum and in many other forums bring about activate debate and policy dialog among all stakeholders such as development practitioners, investment professionals and government officials at Central, Provincial, and Local Government level on economic and social development issues at the People’s Republic of China social and practically addressing the challenges the opportunities confronting us in making those investments that so badly needed.

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good and dedicated people have for the last generation and more worked on many of these issues in recent years. Their visions have only been partially realized. I proposed to have an open and keen dialog addressing the hard issues of investing in development because we do not want our children meeting thirty years from now debating these same topics. We want them to be enjoying the fruits of a far more developed Asia, an Asia built on solid foundations.

I wish you every success in your deliberations on what are indeed watershed issues.

Thank you very much.

Ron Nechemia