Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,

          First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to you for convening this 40th Executive Session of the Trade and Development Board.  I also wish to thank Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, and President Mkapa for their important statements and perceptive observations.

          My delegation wishes to associate itself with the statements made by Ambassador Masood Khan of Pakistan, on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, and the distinguished representative of Afghanistan, on behalf of the Asian Group.

          Dr. Supachai and his team must be congratulated for their initiative to enhance the role of UNCTAD through the establishment of the Panel of Eminent Persons, comprising prominent world leaders and thinkers. Thailand appreciates and welcomes the Panel of Eminent Persons’ Report which provides many pragmatic and concrete recommendations for UNCTAD’s reform process in order to improve its effectiveness, efficiency and relevance in the development arena.

          In charting the future directions of UNCTAD, it is of course essential that all Member States should be fully involved and supportive of the process.  This is why a dialogue such as this is of great importance.  As UNCTAD moves ahead, it must continue to focus on its core competencies and adhere to the Organization’s three pillars of policy analysis, consensus building, and technical assistance. At the same time, however, it must always seek to stay “ahead of the curve” by identifying and analyzing key emerging issues. 

          In order to promote interactive debate and produce more useful and applicable outcomes, one option is for UNCTAD to develop draft guidelines and policy options on the key issues, and encourage Member States to discuss the said guidelines and options.  We must be bold enough to offer pragmatic solutions that will be generally beneficial but which may sometimes challenge conventional thinking. For this reason, the idea of establishing a global network of think tanks and a consultative group of eminent development economists, as recommended in the Report, certainly deserves serious consideration.

          It should be noted that among the 21 recommendations in the Report, there are several that require cooperation from other stakeholders. Recommendation No. 2 suggests a registry to cover mandates of all UN organizations and specialized agencies, while Recommendation No. 5 suggests strengthening UNCTAD’s partnerships with those agencies.

          The question of duplication, redundancy and lack of coherence, which results in wasted resources, has become a problem for development stakeholders as well as for the entire UN system. We therefore agree with the Panel’s recommendations that UNCTAD can contribute to a UN system-wide coherent approach by providing complementarities through strengthened cooperation and coordination, and streamlining the relationship with other international organizations and development partners.

          On UNCTAD’s role at country level, Thailand supports the increased participation of UNCTAD in country level mechanisms for technical assistance and development programmes, as advocated in Recommendation No. 18.  This would result in both strengthening national capacity and enhancing the ability of UNCTAD and Member States to develop demand- and need-driven development programmes.

Mr. President,

          Thailand hopes to see UNCTAD’s reform process moving forward in an effective manner because we see the importance of UNCTAD and the value that it can provide to the international community. We stand ready to discuss the individual recommendations contained in the Report, but are also aware that further analysis on the pros and cons of the recommendations is necessary for consultations in the future. 

          In considering these recommendations, it might be useful to have a kind of roadmap, with clear-cut schedules in which each of the recommendations or policy options should be implemented.  In this regard, Thailand supports the idea of establishing a number of open-ended working groups to consider the merits of the recommendations, which can be organized into clusters to facilitate the deliberations.

          In any case, we hope to see progress achieved in these consultations which will contribute to the UNCTAD XII preparatory process. The constructive cooperation of all Member States is therefore of the essence. We fully agree with Recommendation No. 10 of the Report, which seeks cooperation from Member States to avoid confrontation, build trust, and nurture a spirit of development partnership. In this regard, Thailand would like to reassure the Secretary-General and other Member States of our full support and commitment in this process of UNCTAD.

          Thank you.