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Mr. President,
Pakistan delegation wishes to congratulate you and other members of the Bureau on your election. We assure you of our support during the work of the Board in 2012. We also convey our appreciation for the work done by the outgoing President and the Bureau members.
We thank the UNDP Administrator for providing us a comprehensive overview of the subjects of importance to the Executive Board. We also congratulate her on providing very able leadership to the UNDP.
Pakistan associates itself with the statement made by Argentina on behalf of G-77 & China. We would make some additional points in our national capacity.
Mr. President,
We appreciate the important role of UN funds and programmes in support of national development efforts of all developing countries. We welcome the progress made towards improving coherence and coordination within UN organisations. It is equally necessary to take advantage of synergies and complementarities and avoid duplications. It is important that the wealth of experience which the funds and programmes share amongst themselves is efficiently deployed to better serve programme countries.
We look forward to have fruitful discussions during the 2012 QCPR (Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review). We also hope that the ongoing debate on the review of the UNDP Programming Arrangements for 2008-2013 will result in more effective positioning of UN in programme countries in support of their development efforts.
With regard to the debate on the review of the Programming Arrangements, we will like to make the following points:
First,we consider it important that our discussion and resultant outcomes do not dilute the focus of UNDP on Low Income Countries (LICs) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
Second,formulation of a coherent and effective strategy of UN engagement with Middle Income Countries (MICs) is important. We are, nevertheless, aware that given the diversity of Middle Income Countries and difference in their needs and requirements, treating them as a single category has its own challenges. The argument in favour of a refined MICs classification is, therefore, worth consideration. Some options on countries classification criteria have been presented to us. While continue working on developing better understanding of those options, we believe that our discussions will be further enriched if the idea of further dividing MICs into lower and upper middle income countries with allocation of fixed proportion of resources to the lower MICs, who share more similarities with Low Income Countries than with some of the higher Middle Income Countries is explored to help better focus UN engagement.
Third,the threshold revisions after every two years, i.e. midway through the programming arrangements, to take into account the updated data, will, in our view, be also helpful to ensure alignment of resources and efforts that is in line with the latest situation on the ground.
Mr. President,
Developing countries are facing a daunting and complex development situation. The global financial and economic crisis coupled with food and energy price hikes as well as the continued deterioration of environmental situation has further compounded their challenges. The traditional donors, however, appear to be reluctant to commit the requisite resources for development, though on the basis of a contestable argument. The obvious consequence, nevertheless, is resource scarcity at a time when developing countries need more resources to address the intimidating development challenges.
We, therefore, emphasize that the effectiveness of the UN development efforts must be enhanced to increase their impact and response to different needs of programme countries.
I thank you.