Statement delivered by H. E. Colonel Tin Ngwe, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Progress of Border Areas and National Races and Development Affairs, Union of Myanmar

Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen
　　At the outset I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the Government of the People's Republic of China for inviting the Myanmar delegation to this auspicious occasion. It is indeed a great opportunity for the ASEAN Member Countries to gather here with the honourable representatives of China, Japan and Korea as well as the Distinguished Delegates from International Organizations and various organizations to share experiences on strategies pursued at all levels to reduce poverty to exchange views on increasing cooperation for poverty alleviation.

　　Taking this opportunity, I would, first of all, like to brief about Myanmar's endeavours on poverty alleviation while simultaneously implementing rural development tasks. Myanmar has been implementing the National Development Plan with the aim of accelerating growth, achieving equitable and balanced development and reducing socio-economic development gap between rural and urban areas of the country.

Mr. Chairman,
　　To achieve the balanced growth over the whole country and to narrow down the disparity between urban and rural areas, the Government has laid down three national development programmes. These development plans are named as Border Areas Development Plan, Rural Development Plan and the Plan for the Development of 24 Special Zones. Among three programmes the Border Areas Development Plan was launched in 1989 to fulfill the basic needs of the nationalities residing in remote and border areas. This programme is quite unique among the developing countries. The second programme has focused on rural poor areas in order to improve the status and well being of rural populace comprising 70 percent of the total population. Then the third development plan aims at fostering homogeneous development in the country by establishing 24 special zones comprising of one university or one degree college, one technical college and one 200-bedded hospital in each Development Zone. These strategies also aim at raising the standard of living of the entire people as well as to reduce poverty throughout the country. With the implementation of the National Development Programme, significant progress has been achieved in various sectors, such as health, education, infrastructure and agriculture.

　　The average rural family size in Myanmar is 5.32 (2001 HIES Report) and according to the estimates, 26.6% of the total population in the Union are under poverty line where 20.7% and 28.4 % of the urban people and rural populace respectively are poor. The Government of the Union of Myanmar has been implementing rural development programmes with all its available resources as well as in line with the ASEAN Action Plan for Rural Development and Poverty Eradication.

　　Myanmar is rich in natural resources and the concurrence of natural disasters are very seldom and very few. However, the disintegration of national solidarity and the insurgency problem had hampered the nation building tasks since the country regained independence. Therefore, the present Government, since taking responsibility of the State, has been fostering National Solidarity, has formulated and implemented the Seven Steps of Road Map for the Democratization of the Nation.

Mr. Chairman
　　The ASEAN Countries and other developing countries which had encountered the challenges of poverty have embarked on poverty eradication activities in collaboration with International Organizations. We have noted that some ASEAN countries are successful in their attempts to address the poverty issue but we also found that some are less successful.

　　As all the Distinguished Delegates are aware, the Millennium Development Goals adopted in September 2000 during the United Nations Millennium Summit held in New York, have set the time-bound targets for eradication of poverty and fostering sustainable human development. The first goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and it sets the target of making halve between 1990 and 2015. Myanmar never had experiences on measuring poverty by using PPP ratio. However, efforts have been made to estimate poverty through conducting the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) in 2001 with the sample size of 30,000 households from 75 sample townships. The average per capita GDP at current price for States and Divisions is Kyats 212,217 in the year 2005-2006 and economic growth has shown 13.2%.

Mr. Chairman,
　　It is of utmost important for the country to have access to save drinking water for rural communities. In our country the central area is quite dry and marked as arid zone with scarcity of clean water. In order to address this problem, the Government of Myanmar has laid down ten years plan for three divisions namely Sagaing, Mandalay and Magwe. The survey carried out at the village-level found that 8042 villages needed assistance. The plan starting from 2000-2001 fiscal year by digging of tube wells. During the five years period, 7717 villages have obtained access to safe drinking water in addition to the village water supply programme, measures are also being taken to provide clean water for rural schools and markets.

　　In conclusion may I reiterate the fact that the efforts towards the alleviation of poverty has been made in Myanmar by utilizing our own resources. The Government of the Union of Myanmar is striving to carry out poverty reduction activities together with the national and international. Cooperation with the UN agencies and international NGOs including the national NGOs is necessary for implementing poverty reduction strategies. It is encouraging to see the significant outcome especially in some segments of the health, water and sanitation and primary education sectors. We will support the proposal for cooperation among the member countries as well as with the international organizations in terms of exchanging views, experiences and projects. May I express my heartfelt thanks to the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development for hosting this seminar as well as for the warm hospitality extended to us since we arrived in this beauty city of Beijing. We wish this seminar a great success and achieve good results.

Thank you