Opening Remarks for the Donors Meeting with the Prime Minister

By
The World Bank
On behalf of the Donor Community
to the Kingdom of Cambodia
Phnom Penh, June 30, 2005

Samdech Prime Minister, Excellencies, Colleagues:

Thank you for inviting us to this meeting.  On behalf of the entire donor community, I would like to make some brief opening remarks after which the Ambassadors of Germany and Japan will speak on the issue of natural resources management, which is the focus of our discussions today. 

The donor community would like to convey to you its appreciation of the process that the Government has adopted since the December 2004 CG Meeting of following up on the implementation of the Joint Monitoring Indicators agreed at the CG Meeting.  The Government Donor Coordination Committee (GDCC) has met on a quarterly basis.  These meetings are well prepared and attended by senior government officials and provide a systematic opportunity for review of progress on the joint monitoring indicators.  The process is an open and transparent one and we welcome the invitation extended to representatives of the NGO community to participate in these meetings.

The GDCC meetings are a great improvement compared to the past, since agreements reached at CG meetings can now be followed up on to help ensure implementation.  The regular GDCC meetings allow us to take note of where progress is being made and where it is lagging, so that we can jointly identify and deal with obstacles to reform.  We believe that this process is critical for ensuring that Cambodia can meet all the indicators before the next CG meeting so that it can establish a track record of reforms and can start to build credibility by following through on its commitments. More importantly, we also believe that implementation of these reforms will lead to the realization of the Government’s vision of a more prosperous and better governed Cambodia, as laid out in the Rectangular Strategy. 

While the GDCC is an adequate mechanism for monitoring progress in areas where the responsibility on the Government’s side is quite clear and resides typically in one ministry or agency, for some of the monitoring indicators that cut across many ministries, the reporting requirements are still not clear and there has been lack of progress in discussing these.  For example, on the issue of public disclosure of information on contracts governing the use of state assets –such as land concessions, mining concessions, fishing lots, and the continued disclosure of the status of review of forest concessions—the reporting responsibilities are still unclear.  We would welcome such clarification so that progress can be made in this critical area of transparency and information disclosure. 

Finally, while the recent GDCC noted progress in a number of areas, it also highlighted one critical area where progress has been limited and which has therefore become the main area of concern of the donor community.  This is the issue of natural resources management, which is the topic of today’s discussion.  I would now like to turn first to the Ambassador of Germany and then to the Ambassador of Japan to highlight our concerns to you.

Thank you.