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Mr. Chairman,
Honourable Heads of State and Government,
Honourable Ministers,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
At the outset, I wish to join others in expressing
my sincere appreciation to His Highness the Emir and the State
of Qatar for hosting this historic gathering of Heads of State
and Government of the members of the Group of 77 and China.
This Second South Summit is another unique opportunity for
us to review our progress since Havana, see where we stand
and adjust our course accordingly to move us closer towards
our development goals.
Mr. Chairman,
Forty years after its inception, the Group of
77 has become the largest grouping of developing countries,
and a major forum to provide ideas and initiatives as well
as contributions to development and the functioning of the
United Nations. Throughout those years, we have witnessed
constant changes in the challenges facing the developing world.
The First South Summit in Havana set out to define and redefine
those challenges and guide our course of action in meeting
them.
We have committed to strengthen our South-South
cooperation as an integral part of our strategy to achieve
sustained economic growth. Yet, hopes and aspirations of hundreds
and thousands of millions of our people remain to be fulfilled.
Many of us are struggling to uplift the living standards of
people in order to achieve the targets of the UN Millennium
Development Goals. Many are in need of market access, debt
relief, and demand driven aid. Our goals for poverty eradication
and raising the livelihood of our people are still a long
winding road that requires greater efforts, careful guidance
and greater attention by all.
The G8's recent announcement of 100% debt relief
for the 18 heavily indebted poor countries is a sign that
the developed world is taking a more realistic approach to
development. We all welcome this landmark initiative. But
the expansion of debt relief to include all heavily indebted
developing countries would be another major step forward.
It would free up those countries' energies and resources for
more productive pursuits in health, education, infrastructure
and many new projects to shorten the path to development.
We applaud this G8 initiative even if it should have come
a lot earlier. We hope that with the G8 and the EU commitment,
we will see more from the rest of the developed world.
Mr. Chairman,
As our Group houses four-fifths of the world
population, it is not the G8 or anyone else but us, all the
developing countries, who owe it to our people and people
around the world to craft a development strategy that recognizes
and draws strength from the great diversity of ourselves.
The ultimate responsibility for development rests squarely
with us. We cannot expect others to help us without first
helping ourselves. The G8 initiative is certainly welcome
by all of us but we cannot be over-rejoiced or complacent.
On the contrary, this initiative must encourage us to double
and redouble our coherence, cooperation, and coordination
both among ourselves and with key partners.
The emphasis should be on the three pillars
of partnership for development and growth: namely, the South-South
partnership, the North-South partnership and the public-private
sector partnership. As a group we must not underestimate our
inherent potentials. We must look within before we look out
for outside partnership. We must bring in all sectors and
all stake holders within our economies to share the responsibility
and commitment for the benefits of all.
The proposal by His Highness the Emir of the
State of Qatar to set up the South Fund for Development and
Human Circumstances of 20 million US dollars is to be welcome
as a good example of how we can cooperate from within.
In this regard, I wish to share with you some
of Thailand's perspectives in development.
First, the strengthening of the grassroots economy.
Badly hit by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, my country has
learned economic lessons the hard way. We now fully understand
the real need to lay the firm foundation for our growth with
the limited resources available. The export sector of the
economy may be the champion in bringing income and foreign
currencies. But the genuine backbone of the economy is our
grassroots. We initiated and implemented with a high degree
of success the dual track economic policy aiming at the growing
of the export sector and the strengthening of the grassroots
economy at the same time.
When we have limited amount of water, we simply
must water our plant from the bottom not the top for the plant
to grow. The water needs to go to the root. Likewise, with
limited resources, we must use them wisely and directly for
the grassroots economy to grow. The grassroots need access
to resources and capital so that they can turn their indigenous
skills and talents into productive outcome, thus generating
employment and income. When the poor have more purchasing
power, then producing sectors can expand their production,
and the whole economy grows. Access to capital can be achieved
by micro-credit facilities that can be made available in various
forms: revolving village funds, SME banks, people's banks,
for instance. Once we made capital available, small business
like TV or bicycle repair shops for example were mushrooming,
thus creating jobs and income, and a scheme like what we call
the OTOP, which is a one village, one product initiative scheme,
was launched nationwide. This is a grand collaboration effort
of the people in the village, our grassroots, the government,
and the private sector
The government made initial investment available,
the villagers produce, the government and the private sector
help with the ideas, promotion and marketing, thus income
generated and initial investment paid back. With the help
of private sector on IT technology and cyberspace marketing,
more income is generated as villagers are computer literate.
The success of this scheme saw the grassroots income grew
from two hundred to one billion US dollars within three years
after its introduction.
Secondly, the self-help and sufficiency economy.
Inspired by His Majesty the King of Thailand's sufficiency
economy theory, the Thai economy has learned to look after
itself within its own means. When I was Foreign Minister,
I have successfully organized a ministerial conference on
sufficiency economy for some two dozens ministers and experts
from Asia, Africa and Latin America last year. Participants
had the opportunity at first hand to see with their own eyes
how sufficiency economy was implemented. Thailand will continue
to offer to all our friends in developing countries to come
and share with us our experiences in this field.
Thirdly, management of globalization. Both the
bright sides and the dark sides of globalization can have
overwhelming impacts upon our economy and society. Since we
cannot run away from them, we must learn to manage them. People
are our precious resources. Management on their health, their
education and capacity building are the best we can do to
meet the challenges of globalization. We in Thailand have
started many initiatives to better prepare our people for
the negative and positive globalization impacts.
Fourthly, the prosper thy neighbours principle.
As we regained our economic confidence and growth from the
1997 crisis, Thailand turns to our neighbours and sub-region
and has taken the initiative to help them to prosper. Simply,
Thailand has no wish to grow all alone. We have no desire
to widen the development gap as we make economic success.
Nor do we seek to gain advantage from our fast rate of growth
at the expense of our neighbours. We believe in consolidated
strength. We believe in prospering others while prospering
ourselves. We believe that an economic cooperation strategy
with our neighbours is vital to bridge our development gap
to fulfill the aspiration for an economic community of our
people in the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations or ASEAN.
Fifthly, the importance of partnership, building
blocks and their linkages. We encourage both the South-South
and North-South partnership. Thailand has fostered development
partnership with a good number of developing countries. At
the same time, we have concluded several partnership accords
with developed partners to work with them in respective development
programmes in other developing countries. We were among the
first to report our achievement in MDG Goal 8 on partnership.
We look at the creation of sub-regional blocks and regional
blocks as necessary components of effective multilateral cooperation.
We believe that developing countries can benefit from cooperation
and exchange of best practices both at the country-to-country
level and block-to-block level. That was why Thailand has
been instrumental in linking the cooperation between South
and Southeast Asia and in fostering the first pan-Asia functional
cooperation by the name of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue or
ACD.
Last but not least is the role of the United
Nations in development. As we are debating the UN reform,
we must ensure that the reform is not all about just the Security
Council enlargement. But it must primarily be all about accountability,
transparency, efficiency, effectiveness and global good governance.
We must ensure that development remains and
will always remain at the top of the UN agenda with better
and more effective mechanism. We must ensure that the United
Nations after reform will have more relevance to livelihood
of any poor villager in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean
and Latin America. We must ensure that the right balance between
freedom from fear and freedom from want will be attained.
We must ensure that regional and sub-regional building blocks
will play a more constructive role in the effectiveness of
the UN multilateral system. We must ensure that developing
countries will play a greater role in rule-making and decision-making
process in global financial , trade and development issues.
But most important of all, as we enrich our
reform debates and principles, we must not let them be so
divisive that they inhibit faster progress in reaching the
Millennium Development Goals and the development agenda.
Mr. Chairman,
Although I take pride in what Thailand has accomplished
in development, I believe that there are many more among over
130 members of our Group of 77 and China who have made great
achievements and are prepared to share our best practices.
Let us work harder to improve our coherence, cooperation and
coordination.
Asia, the Pacific, Africa, the Caribbean or
Latin America, no matter which part of the world we are, we
all have the same aspiration and responsibility. Our peoples
deserve better living and our children deserve better future.
We cannot let down our people and our children whether this
generation or the next.
Let this Summit send a new message of hopes
and actions. Let this Summit mark a new milestone for development.
And let this Summit illustrate to people in the South as much
as in the North that only when we work together can we turn
this earth the better place to live in. Thank you for your
attention.
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