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Thank you Mr. Chair,

          It gives me great pleasure to deliver this statement on behalf of the group of G77 and China under Item (3) Programme Implementation Report (PIR) 2016-17, and would like to highlight the following points:-

          The Group of G77 and China expresses its appreciation for the progress made in the Programme implementation Report in 2016-17 which resulted in the achievement of 82% of the planned Outputs under a more rigorous target setting.

          Nevertheless, We are concerned that despite the efforts of FAO and other UN Agencies, the number of global hunger is rising as confirmed by the 2017 State of World Food Security Report which  indicated that hunger is on the rise after more than 10 years of decline. Currently, 815 million people in the world suffer from hunger, 38 million more than in 2015.  

          The negative effects of climate change and the increasing number of conflicts threaten the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals "SDGs" and especially "SDG 2".

           We believe that the information provided on key programmatic and operational lessons learned for each strategic Objective can be a very import tool for improving future performance and achieving more effectiveness in the work  and outcomes of FAO .

         We note that the FAO has aligned its results framework to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by identifying and using exclusively the SDG targets and indicators that relate to each FAO Strategic Objective. In this regard, we call on FAO to continue to support developing countries in the area of data collection and statistics which is a key for the achievement of the SDGs.

        We support and encourage FAO’s continued engagement in different Fora related to food security and nutrition. In this regard, we believe that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda remain the guiding element for FAO’s work. Additionally, we appreciate the engagement of FAO in the global process leading up to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

          We takes this opportunity to urge FAO to pay attention to the importance of having a balanced representation between Developing and Developed Countries in the incoming high level events organized in the field of food security to give the opportunity to all members to share their views and lesson learned in this regard.

 Mr. Chair,

          While the G77 and China appreciates the continued achievement of efficiency savings which reached 37 million USD in 2016-2017; we would like to stress that any further savings should not lead to undermining the FAO programme of work.

           In the meantime, the FAO budget may be increased in the future depending on the needs of the organization and its ability to deliver its programme of work without undermining the technical capacity at Headquarters and decentralized offices especially for regional and country offices which do not have at the moment adequate technical capacities.

         We appreciate the mobilization of extra-budgetary resources of USD 2.1 billion. We call on donor countries to continue to increase their un-earmarked contributions to FAO that responds to FAO priorities and in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.

 Mr. Chair,

The area of south-South cooperation is one of the key priorities of the G77 and China. We call on FAO to continue to give priority to the use of partnerships to enable the Organization to leverage its comparative advantages, including through South-South and Triangular cooperation.

             The G77 and China requests the secretariat to continue its effort to strengthen capacity building activities, including through South-South and Triangular cooperation.  We encourage FAO to promote innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and climate change adoption through different approaches such as agroecology, biotechnology, biodiversity and GIAHS.

            We strongly call on FAO to continue its efforts to capacitate the decentralized offices with much needed resources, both technical and financial that will empower these offices and make them able to respond to their increasing demands and challenges.

           We call on FAO to continue its work to implement the regional initiatives and to support national efforts to face emerging threats.

           We reiterate the importance of the Technical Cooperation Programme "TCP", and call on FAO to continue to ensure the full utilization of the TCP resources while giving priority to the needs of developing countries to eradicate Poverty and hunger an achieve sustainable development.

           We highlight the need for a fair and market-oriented international agricultural trading system with a view to facilitating market access and investments in agricultural products, so that family farmers and small-scale producers can also benefit from it. We therefore reiterate our call on FAO to continue its attention of the world commodity situation and to support member countries in this regard.

            We stress the importance of strengthening efforts to achieve equitable geographical representation of staff and consultants, and gender balance at professional and senior levels.

 Mr. Chair,

           On the Special Fund for Development Finance Activities (SFDFA), we appreciate the decision to allocate the unspent balance of 3.9 USD to the Special Fund. This would allow FAO to attract more financing to provide technical assistance and investment programming for development. In the meantime, we would like to recall that the target of the fund is 10 million USD, and stress on the importance of providing the necessary financing in this regard. As suggested by the Finance Committee we are looking forward for progress report on the SFDFA.

          And finally, we call on continued work of FAO, in cooperation with WHO in the area of food safety.

         With these comments, the Group of G77 and China transmits the Programme Implementation Report 2016-17 to the Conference.

  Thank you.