Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Cooperation Program

17th GMS Ministerial Conference

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

GMS Ministerial Meeting

Thursday, 4 August 2011

OPENING STATEMENT H.E. Cham Prasidh

Senior Minister, Minister of Commerce and GMS Minister of Cambodia

His Excellency, Mr. Zhang Shaochun of the Peoples Republic of China, His Excellency, Mr. Yaseng Lao, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Lao PDR to the Kingdom of Cambodia, His Excellency, U Tin NaingThein of the Union of Myanmar, His Excellency, Mr. ArkhomTermpittayapaisith of the Kingdom of Thailand, His Excellency, Mr. Vo Hong Phuc of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, Mr. Bindu Lohani, Vice President of the Asian Development Bank,

Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the Royal Government of Cambodia, I would like to greet you all a warm welcome to Phnom Penh, and to thank all of you for coming to participate in this very important 17th Ministerial Conference of the Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Cooperation Program. I am truly honored to serve as your host and Chair for this Conference. Let me thank

ADB for the excellent support in organizing this Conference, and for closely working with our team from the GMS Secretariat of Cambodia.

The GMS Ministerial Conference this year is particularly important as we are about to close the chapter on our current GMS Strategic Framework, which was reviewed at the 11th GMS Ministerial Conference, and endorsed at the very first GMS Summit. Both these events were held right here in Phnom Penh back in 2002. We are now about to launch the new GMS Framework which shall be our guide in moving the GMS Program forward in its third decade, from 2012 to 2022. Cambodia is indeed pleased to again host the Ministerial conference that will review this landmark document.

It is no coincidence that Cambodia has been stepping up its involvement in the GMS cooperation arena, having been a key player of deepening economic cooperation among the participating countries in the GMS Program, given its central location in the Lower Mekong Basin. It has also given great emphasis in its national development strategy on the integration of Cambodia into the regional and global economy through active participation in various regional cooperation initiatives, with the GMS Program having primacy among these initiatives.

Since the GMS Program commenced in 1992, we have witnessed the amazing economic and social transformation of Cambodia on virtually all fronts- GDP growth, increase in exports, intra-regional trade, and openness ratios, rise in investments and most importantly, the overall decline in poverty. To be sure there are a myriad of factors behind our countrys transformation, but this is in no small measure also due to GMS

cooperation. The greater connectivity and integration that the GMS Program created has afforded Cambodia economies of scale and larger market opportunities, which in turn attracted investment, created

employment, increased incomes and fostered broad-based economic growth.

Today as we consider the elements of the new strategy to guide us in the next decade, we should keep in mind that the GMS Program, now more mature, has succeeded, especially in building physical connectivity, largely due to the substantial goodwill and commitment of its member countries and the strong support of development partners led by ADB. The GMS Program has in fact helped fortify the subregions resilience to external shocks, improving the individual GMS countries policy environment and their receptiveness to joint regional efforts. As the new framework recognizes, these are challenging times, with global deleveraging still unfolding in the wake of the global financial crisis, with the debt issues still unresolved in many parts of the world, and climate change bringing

extreme weather patterns and risks of natural disasters that threaten to derail many of our economic gains.

We have carefully studied the proposed new strategy and I can confidently state, after noting the revisions that resulted from the earlier country consultations, that Cambodia fully supports the key

recommendations of the new strategy.

We believe the GMS countries

should continue addressing the still substantial GMS infrastructure gaps, while gearing up for the so-called second generation initiatives under the GMS Program. These initiatives would comprise multisector physical infrastructure investments oriented towards development of GMS economic

corridors, and related to urban as well as rural area development along the corridors. This could mean more investments in urban services such as sanitation, rebalancing in transport with more emphasis on feeder roads and railways, technologically smart investments in energy and

telecommunications, and more sustainable, culture-based tourism projects.

At the same time second generation refers also to greater focus on development of software to more effectively use the infrastructure we have built or are about to build, and to better address our shared social and environmental concerns. This will entail, for instance, advancing our transport and trade facilitation (TTF) agenda under the comprehensive program of action on TTF adopted in last years ministerial conference, as well as making more headway in building GMS power market and trade arrangements, enhancing ICT applications for poverty alleviation using our GMS Information Superhighway Network. It will also involve efforts toward better use of strategic environmental assessments to improve and sustain economic performance of sectors and corridors and focused

implementation of action plans in agriculture and HRD, to address issues such as food safety, and emerging trends in labor markets and demographics.

I am pleased to say that even as we have yet to get final endorsement of the new framework from our Leaders in their Summit this December, we have already made noteworthy gains in putting in place the nuts and bolts of this strategy through various GMS sectoral initiatives. These initiatives are in the form of the various deliverables that we have also planned for endorsement by our Leaders. We will later hear from our senior officials the progress we have made in preparing these various

deliverables. Among these is the Core Environment Program framework, which the GMS Environment Ministers meeting held here in Phnom Penh last week, and which was graced by no less than our Prime Minister, His Excellency Hun Sen, agreed to submit to the 4th GMS Summit for endorsement. This CEP framework seeks to make GMS development more pro-poor and more sustainable through effective integration of biodiversity conservation, eco-system management and climate change resilience in all our plans and programs.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Much work remains to be done in the new decade to ensure that we are advancing the GMS economic cooperation program toward its full potential. The GMS Program is a dynamic program, flexible, adaptive but results oriented. It is only right therefore that it changes with time, both because it is maturing, and because the world around us is not static. The new strategic framework is the first step in this process, to be followed by many others in terms of implementation. This Conference recognizes this need, which is why we have planned our Ministerial Retreat later today to focus on determining the priority actions and approaches that are needed to implement the new framework and attain the goals it set. The Retreat will also provide an opportunity for us to informally exchange our views on the GMS cooperation more broadly. I am looking forward to this even more today since some of us are leading a delegation to the GMS Ministerial Meeting for the first time. As someone long involved with the GMS program, I take special pleasure in welcoming you to this Ministerial Meeting.

Let me now wish us all a successful meeting, and I hope we achieve today clear and concrete outcomes to guide the GMS Program to even greater heights. Thank you.