Fellow chairmen, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues,
It is an honour for me, on behalf of the Russian Federation, to welcome you to Moscow for the Second International Conference devoted to broadening cooperation in aiding international development. I would like to thank you all for taking part in this conference and our colleagues from the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for their great contribution to the preparation of this event.
Building up funds for developing countries to use in fighting poverty and ensuring sustained economic growth is high on the agendas of major international forums.
Mobilising the necessary financial resources is undoubtedly one of the main ingredients of success. The past decade has seen a visible trend of increasing aid among the entire donor community. Official development aid increased from $53 billion a year in 2000 to $121 billion in 2009. The bulk of the aid is, of course, made available by the traditional donors. At the same time the recent years have seen a growing role of the so-called emerging donors who are gradually increasing their contribution to Official Development Aid (ODA), including through South-South cooperation. That is an objective process resulting from the growth of national economies in the majority of emerging donors and their increased share in the world markets of goods and services.
The emerging donors are playing an ever more important role in the increasingly complicated architecture of international development aid. The experience of emerging donors as former aid recipients gives them a unique competitive advantage in establishing partnership relations based on regional and cultural ties. South-South cooperation may be an instrument for the exchange of information, experience and the promotion of a partnership dialogue. Humanitarian and technical aid are two areas of South-South cooperation that are developing most vigorously. The practice of tripartite cooperation involving the experience and technical resources of the traditional donors in implementing International Development Assistance (IDA) projects deserves considerable attention.
Obviously, emerging and traditional donors must share the common aim of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and sustainable global development. But the emergence of new partners in the development field not only opens up new ideas and resources, but also presents the entire donor community with new challenges.
Today we face a situation in which the most severe global financial and economic crisis in decades threatens our early successes towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Upheavals on developed countries' financial markets and a dramatic slowdown in their economic growth have already undermined the economic development prospects for the poorest countries. According to recent World Bank studies, 94 out of 116 developing countries have already experienced a slowdown in economic growth, of which 43 are among the poorest countries. The most dramatic fall was in spending on healthcare, education and agriculture. In this regard it is a matter of fundamental importance that the donor community reaffirms its commitment to development aid and keeps its growth rate in line with approved targets.
It should be noted that during the crisis most emerging donors have maintained and in some cases increased the volume of aid they make available whereas many other partners have frozen or reduced their spending on these goals.
Thus, throughout the global economic crisis Russia has not only met its prior obligations, but has substantially increased its expenditure on IDA. The amount of federal budget money made available by Russia in 2009 to developing countries on a bilateral and multilateral basis which, in accordance with the criteria of the OECD Development Assistance Committee is classified as Official Development Aid, is estimated at about $800 million, compared with $220 million the previous year.
In the conditions of the crisis Russia has initiated the formation of a new interaction and of support system for countries in need within the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). At the same time the EurAsEC countries have created a $10 billion Anti-Crisis Fund to which the Russian Federation contributes $7.5 billion. The Fund's resources will be used in part to support countries with a low per capita income on terms that are comparable to the Official Development Aid criteria.
Russia plans to use a diverse array of mechanisms, including multilateral approaches, to ensure it delivers on ODA. The Russian Federation is using the main advantages of this form of assistance: the existence, in international organisations, of established institutional mechanisms of delivering aid to its recipients, as well as additional opportunities for its coordination and harmonisation, the use of financial monitoring systems, specialist technical potential and knowledge.
Russia thinks it is very important to maintain those positive trends in development financing that have emerged in recent years. Therefore we are increasing the volume and diversifying the formats of interaction with various multilateral institutions, including UN organisations. This includes contributions to international organisations that implement development programmes, being involved in financing global funds and special international initiatives under the auspices of the G8 and G20, as well as supporting innovative instruments for ODA financing.
We have stepped up our support for the World Bank's efforts to help countries in need. In accordance with the accords of the G20 leaders the Russian Federation has decided to participate in the Bank's programme to support the most vulnerable countries and sectors during the crisis, which will be financed to the tune of up to $50 million. The funds made available under that programme are used to support the social security system, sustain employment levels, stabilise the situation on the labour market and provide access to basic social services.
The next few years will be crucial for the process of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, guided by the principle of joint responsibility for international development, we believe that under these conditions the support and participation of all donors in mobilising resources as part of this year's 16th capital replenishment of the International Development Association are particularly important.
Today all the participants in the existing development assistance system need to take into account the new historical realities we face. What is needed if we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals set before the international community is cohesive partnership based on the experience of: the donors themselves, multilateral development organisations and the countries that receive aid. Consolidating efforts to eliminate such global threats as hunger, poverty, epidemics, environmental degradation and the wealth gap between different parts of the world are other imperatives.
The 2006 Conference "Emerging Donors in the Global Development Community" held under the Russian presidency of the G8 outlined the broad principles of strengthening the global system of aid delivery: knowledge sharing, the need for coordinated policies and actions and the partner countries being committed to dialogue.
During today's conference "New Partnerships in Financing Global Development" we would like to identify practical steps towards further cooperation, share our experiences, strengthen the multilateral partnership dialogue that aims to achieve consensus on the efficiency and administration of development aid and on broadening tripartite cooperation. For our part we intend to contribute to the development of this process and to play an active role in establishing new partnership relations that make it possible to devise a new global aid delivery system.
In conclusion I would like to once again reaffirm Russia's commitment to the international development goals and to wish this conference every success. I hope that the partnership dialogue which began in 2006 will continue and will contribute to the search for new forms of cooperation.
Thank you for your attention.