Excellencies,

Distinguished Colleagues,

At the outset, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Permanent Mission of People’s Republic of China, for convening this important high-level event. I share the sentiments expressed earlier by the previous speakers and echo Lao PDR’s full support to the Global Development Initiative (GDI). Allow me to share with you my observation as follows:

First, the rapidly changing global environment today offers both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, in recent years, we have witnessed rising unilateral coercive measures, digital and development gap as well as widening inequalities. While many countries continue to face difficulties to recover from the ongoing impact of the pandemic, it is critical that we uphold our commitment to promote the development initiatives, which aim at enhancing regional and international development cooperation and promote multilateralism as catalyst for the maintenance of global peace, security, and prosperity.

Second, Lao PDR commends China for its leading role in implementing the GDI to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda with particular attention given to addressing specific development needs of developing countries, especially the most vulnerable group of countries. The GDI, therefore, provides opportunities for reinforcing multilateral development cooperation by introducing practical and action-oriented solutions to ensure that the off-track SDG targets are met and bring about greater benefits by focusing on specific development challenges.

Third, being both LDC and Landlocked, Lao PDR has firmly been committed to achieve SDGs and set its national ambitious target to graduating from LDC status in the near future. This over-arching goal has been mainstreamed into our National Socio-economic Development Plans, which are also SDG-based plans. It is our fervent hope that, through this GDI, we will be able to adopt relevant programs for development cooperation to accelerate the implementation of the internationally agreed development goals and other related UN Programs of Acton.

Let me conclude by reiterating the Lao PDR’s full commitment and support to the implementation of the GDI and stands ready to cooperate with all partners and we look forward to more tangible outcomes. Thank you.