Today's Date:

Poverty reduction in the world is, for all our countries, a very great challenge. As you know, France has decided substantially to increase her development assistance and is very keen to improve its effectiveness. This is why she attaches the greatest importance to the work of the Development Assistance Committee. The DAC played a crucial role in determining the international development goals which the United Nations endorsed at the Millennium Summit.

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The DAC's working methods are very much those of France herself. Peer pressure, learning from each other and the principle of collective responsibility seem to us excellent ground rules. This is particularly true at the moment: in our effort to modernize our aid, our partners' experience is extremely useful to us. In volume terms, we are working resolutely to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Our assistance, which rose from 0.32% to 0.36% of GDP between 2001 and 2002, should reach around 0.39% in 2003, rising to 0.5% of GDP in 2007 and 0.7% in 2012.

We still have to make sure that this aid bears fruit. So we must improve its effectiveness by modernizing our instruments.

I should like, if I may, to give you a few illustrations of the efforts France has developed in this sphere. Capacity building is one of the keys to improving the effectiveness of our assistance in the partnership framework, a way of working which has to be prioritized. So we have to improve our technical assistance. This is why we have created a new body to manage our technical assistance called France Coopération internationale. It will offer more flexible technical assistance capable of meeting our partner's needs in the most efficient way. Our project-based aid is also being improved. The French Development Agency (Agence française de Développement), which is our main operator, has carried out a detailed review of its action and in 2002 adopted a new Strategic Policy Plan.

This is centred on two main tasks: the fight against poverty and the poor countries' integration in the world economy.

Finally, our efforts are consistent with the strategic poverty-reduction frameworks defined by the recipient countries themselves in agreement with the donor community. Consequently, we are now placing greater emphasis on sectoral aids than in the past.

I should like here to make a general observation which my delegation will be able to come back to in more detail during tomorrow's session. One of the ways of increasing the effectiveness of our assistance is to improve the coordination between public and private-sector efforts, principally in order to increase investment.

In this respect, we think it important to develop new instruments like the guaranties. The inclusion of these guarantees in official development assistance, under terms and conditions still to be considered, would be a significant incentive to increasing efforts in this sphere. I propose that DAC looks into this possibility.

The effectiveness of the aid cannot be separated from its harmonization. This makes it possible to reconcile the concern to simplify the task of the developing countries using our assistance with the diversity provided by the various bilateral aid schemes, a diversity which it is important to safeguard. Harmonization does not mean standardization. So we were very happy to join in the work of the Task Force on Donor Practices chaired by Mr Richard Manning, and take this opportunity of welcoming his forthcoming chairmanship of the DAC.

As we pointed out at the Rome Forum, we consider it would be useful for these efforts to lead to the DAC's adoption of a recommendation which could be prepared within the new group for "aid effectiveness and donor cooperation".

This recommendation will, however, be wholly meaningful only if we move towards results-based management of assistance. This requires inter alia the definition of common indicators. This task could also be entrusted to the new working group, liaising with the multilateral development banks and UN bodies. (...)./.