“Meet the Press” Event On the preparations for the 13th High Level Round Table Meeting

Representatives of the Press,

It is a pleasure to join you today alongside Madame Phonevanh Outhavong, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment, to discuss the preparations for the 13th High-Level Roundtable Meeting.

Taking place every five years, High-Level Roundtable Meetings provide a unique opportunity to bring all key development stakeholders- Government, member state and international organisations, civil society, the private sector, all representatives of the development partners of Lao PDR, together at the highest level  --- possible during this enduring pandemic.

By providing a forum to discuss and support the design and implementation of the country’s national development plans and processes, it allows us to learn, share promising practise and build on our achievements by analysing where we are, how that has worked, and what we can do to improve.

This year’s meeting in particular comes at an important moment for Lao PDR. 2021 marks the first year of implementation of the 9th 5-year National Socio-Economic Development Plan.

We also, of course, continue to contend with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has threatened development progress, not just in Lao PDR but across the world- and indeed prevented us from organizing a Roundtable Meeting last year. But now, we have become masters in online meetings and are gradually learning to live with COVID -19 so we have ventured into not delaying this anymore, despite the limitations in organising this event.

Among the many development dimensions, as well as taking into consideration the wide-ranging consequences of the pandemic, we need also to consider challenges associated with sustainability and climate change, quality and inclusive growth, financing constraints, human capital, infrastructure development, and the planning for transition from Least Developed Country status, which Lao PDR hopes to achieve in 2026.

In this context, we hope that the 2021 High-Level Roundtable Meeting will make a valuable contribution to improving the effectiveness of development work in Lao PDR.

To lay the groundwork for this, there will be a series of pre-consultations and side-events leading into the one-day high level Roundtable itself, allowing for more in-depth and constructive discussions than would be possible online over the course of only one day.

These pre-consultations will cover issues including financing for development, improving the effectiveness of development cooperation, developing a COVID-19 recovery plan, and preparing for LDC graduation. 

In addition to this, many development partners are either elaborating or have recently finalised new strategic cooperation frameworks – so this is an important time to coordinate our work to ensure we support the achievement of the national vision and articulation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as outlined in the 9th NSEDP in the most effective manner possible.

This includes the UN, which has recently finalised our new UN- Lao PDR Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, which is aligned with the 9th National Plan and will guide our programming over the next five years.

The Roundtable is an important platform that will help bring all of these pieces together. Any one of Lao PDR’s many and diverse development partners would benefit from an overview of the development landscape to best position its engagement, realize synergies, avoid overlaps- and so to best contribute to sustainable development pathway.

To tackle all of this in a coherent way, the Roundtable has been organized into three main chapters:

• Reflecting on progress so far and ‘taking stock’ of achievements and challenges related to national planning, development cooperation and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with a recap of the second Voluntary National Review of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals prepared earlier this year.
• Two, ‘looking forward’ - a crucial point in the Roundtable Meeting which will entail a review of the 9th NSEDP as well as the necessary implementation arrangements including the monitoring and evaluation framework and the development of a financing strategy, the road ahead for LDC graduation, and a COVID-19 recovery plan.
• And finally, ‘thinking about how’, where we will reflect with the objective to enhance both the efficiency and the effectiveness of development cooperation in Lao PDR through an assessment of the Vientiane Declaration Country Action Plan (VDCAP), which was drafted to guide the implementation of Vientiane Declaration on Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation.

In order to achieve our objectives for the Meeting, working towards a truly shared understanding of development priorities and plans amongst all stakeholders with a role in contributing to national development, we count on the particular role of the media in relaying key messages to the broadest audience possible.

So, I am especially glad to have the opportunity to outline our plans to you today, to answer your questions, and encourage you all to follow the process over the coming weeks for your respective audiences.

Thank you.