Programme Advisory Committee Meeting

Your Excellency Mr. Leepao Yang, Vice Minister of Labour and Social Welfare,

Mr. Dan Heldon, Deputy Head of Mission, Australian Embassy to Lao PDR

Respected colleagues from Government and Development Partners,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to represent the United Nations here today, at the Advisory Committee Meeting of the UN Joint Programme, “Leaving no one behind: Establishing the basis for social protection floors in Lao PDR”.

Today’s meeting is important, giving us an opportunity to take stock of the Programme’s achievements to date, and discuss some of the policy documents on social protection prepared under the Programme, and the way ahead. 

Having completed 22 months of joint government-UN work, it is also an opportunity to thank the donors: the Australian Government, and the Joint SDG Fund (and its contributors, the EU; Denmark; Germany; Ireland; Luxembourg; Monaco; the Netherlands; Norway; Portugal; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; and the private sector) for their support, and thank the Government of Lao PDR for our ongoing partnership.

When the Programme was launched in January 2020, we had little idea of the disruptions that lay ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic indeed forced us to shift our priorities and adjust our plans in how to ensure that social protection benefits can be provided to the people as efficiently as possible, emphasizing the importance of building national social protection systems that can immediately respond to crises when they happen and meet the needs of people at times when they are most in need of social protection.

The National Social Protection Strategy of the Vision 2030, which is outlined as a goal with activities within the 9th NSEDP to be achieved by 2025 was adopted last year. Since then, the UN Joint Programme has been supporting the Government to operationalise the Strategy, by developing a practical “Action Plan”, a detailed “cost estimation” for its implementation, and a “Monitoring tool” to measure the progress of implementation against the stated goals as well as target indicator 1.3 under SDG 1 on ensuring social protection systems for all which promotes prosperity and is key to poverty eradication. Today, we will hear more details about these 3 policy documents, that we hope will serve useful for the work of the soon-to-be-established National Social Protection Commission.

Let me also speak to the importance of financing for the National Social Protection Strategy.

The UN Country Team is supporting the Ministry of Planning and Investment and other key partners in developing a financing strategy for the 9th National Socio-Economic Development Plan, taking a holistic approach to considering how to maximise the use of available resources in support of national priorities.

This calls for an inclusive approach to engage all sources of finance, including both public and private, domestic and international, and all relevant stakeholders.

In Lao PDR, the challenge is not only “how to increase the slice of the cake for social protection”, but also “how to increase the size of the entire cake”. I would propose that doing this requires four important conditions:

1. Bringing all actors together, both at country level and internationally, recognizing that each has an important role to play, and critical contribution to make,
2. Thinking creatively of progressive ways of increasing the domestic tax base, despite the challenges that it entails,
3. A move towards increasing formalization. Whether we think of contributory or tax-funded social protection or a combination thereof, the formalization of economic activity and jobs is essential to increase the revenue base, and to strengthen the social contract between the state and individuals as a foundation for sustainable social protection.
4. and finally, the willingness to question how certain issues are handled and debated, with one pertinent example being the ongoing discussion around debt as unsustainable debt has important consequences for development, but when addressing debt financing, care also needs to be taken in how austerity measures to manage these debt levels are implemented. To this end, well-designed social protection systems could help recovery and build the basis for repayment into the future, but this would require a serious consideration of how resources raised by issuing debt are used.

Under the UN Joint Programme, discussions have been initiated on finding innovative financing mechanisms, such as the creation of a Social Protection Fund or Funds, which combine gradual increasing commitments from national governments, private sector and with financial support and technical assistance from development partners.

However, we must also recognize that this is a long process and not one that can be achieved overnight.

To this end, and given the importance of social protection in today’s world and its significance in ministerial and development partners’ agendas, it is our hope that the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare will initiate the establishment of a forum to discuss and coordinate the efforts of different ministries as well as national and international partners, with the National Social Protection Commission, which will soon be established through a PM decree. On the UN side, we have established a “Social Protection” group under the new UN cooperation framework, to ensure our systemwide and collaborative assistance to the government.

To conclude, let me reiterate three key calls for (i) greater policy coherence; (ii) sound financial architecture through domestic resource mobilization; and (iii) international solidarity and enhanced multilateral cooperation… to accelerate social protection extension and job creation.