NEPAL

The Right Honourable Sher Bahadur Deuba, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Nepal

At the outset, I join the distinguished previous speakers in congratulating you, Mr. Chairman, on your well-deserved election to preside over this Summit. I also take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the Government and people of Italy for the warm hospitality accorded to us. The Director-General of FAO also deserves our appreciation for organizing this historic event.

The global political and economic scenario has undergone tremendous change since the World Food Conference was held in 1974. Although we are at the threshold of the twenty-first century, when the scientific and technological explosion has enormously enriched our productive potential, poverty, hunger and malnutrition still deny more than 800 million people around the world their right to food. This is patently unacceptable.

We live in a world where the relentlessly growing population is outpacing food availability and damaging the environment in many developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. We cannot expect a peaceful and orderly world without ensuring for all, physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food, the most fundamental of all human needs. It involves not only an increase in food production but also better distribution and sustainable consumption of available food, together with measures to alleviate poverty and stabilize population growth.

The Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action cover all these important issues. The Declaration clearly indicates the intention of the world leaders to free the world from hunger with assured access to safe and nutritious food for everyone; to eradicate hunger in all the countries; and to reduce the number of undernourished people to half their present level within two decades. We subscribe to these goals and will work dedicatedly towards their achievement.

Food security in Nepal is closely linked to the issue of poverty, resulting in the scattered incidence of hunger and malnutrition. Poverty in Nepal has an important geographical dimension. Due to the lack of enabling infrastructure, the economic efforts of our people are frustrated by high transaction costs which, in turn, inhibit trade between the food-deficit hills and the food-surplus southern plains. Once the economic reform process bears fruit, overall poverty will certainly decline. But overcoming the geographical dimension of poverty will depend on how fast we can develop the transportation infrastructure which, in the mountainous topography of Nepal, is a capital-intensive task which requires high recurrent costs for repair and maintenance.

His Majesty's government is working to root out poverty through enhanced growth, sustained agricultural and rural development, employment generation and the extension of social services, provision of rural infrastructure and environmental protection. The basic policy thrust of His Majesty's government assumes that economic development depends to a great extent on the equitable participation of people in the national development process. The Government can influence the growth process by expanding opportunities for the participation of the private sector, civil society and local communities by providing the requisite institutional support. The existence of a dual structure of the economy, the vast rural sector and a small but expanding modern sector, has led us to adopt unique and innovative approaches and programmes for the development of these two sectors with close links between them. The Government follows a liberal pro-market economy in the modern sectors with minimum government interference. It, however, plays a key role in generating a productive environment, in expanding infrastructure and in improving the quality of health and educational services in the rural sector.

To ensure people's participation in development, we have initiated measures to empower the local elected bodies through the process of decentralization and facultative use.

As agricultural development is intricately linked with population growth and natural resource management, we have formulated long-term agriculture plans which aim to increase the real per capita income from the agriculture sector, given the anticipated decline in population growth, from the current level of 0.5 percent to 3.0 percent in about two decades. The requisite policy reforms for this have been initiated and investment plans drawn up. The basic tenet of this process is an integrated development approach with simultaneous expansion of rural infrastructure that supports agriculture, more efficient delivery of inputs and services like irrigation, fertilizers and extension, and development and dissemination of new technology.

Nepal has over the years seen a decline in its per capita food production, and population growth over the past two decades has transformed us from a substantial exporter of cereals into marginal importers. We are, however, ready to face the challenge. His Majesty's Government has recently adopted a long-term agriculture plan with the aim of reversing the trend. The agriculture plan has been closely integrated with our population policy and the programme designed to preserve our natural resources. With increased cooperation from the international community to implement the plan, we expect to produce surplus foodgrains in a few years time.

International cooperation is a crucial element for food security. We are, therefore, concerned by the declining global trend of Official Development Assistance to developing countries, accompanied by decreasing food aid and projected increases in world food prices. This exerts severe pressure on the limited resources, particularly of the least developed countries, most of which are also food-deficit countries.

I call upon the international community to rise to the challenge in order to prevent a further worsening of the situation. Food security for all will entail substantially high investments. The resources, no doubt, have to be generated largely from domestic sources, both public and private. However, the international community, as indicated in the Plan of Action, has to play a key role to assist the developing countries in fostering food security. In view of our encouraging experience in the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, we are convinced that much can be done to alleviate poverty and ensure food security through sub-regional efforts too. I believe our collective commitment and concerted action will go a long way towards eliminating the hunger and malnutrition of nearly one-fifth of the world's population. This is indeed a noble goal worth pursuing.