Thank you very much Mr. President. I would like to thank the people of Marrakesh on behalf of the IDB for hosting this event.

I would like to say a few words in connection with our meeting today and the special pleasure we have to be here discussing once again this very important issue. And I think I am very enthusiastic about the fact that we are going to concentrate discussions on country approaches and really involve what is sure to be a rich exchange by borrower institutions.

The IDB has made progress in managing for development results at the corporate level but we fully recognize that the effective use of this tool must be a shared effort with our borrowing members. This in turn requires that we listen, listen carefully to the needs of borrowers and assist them in developing their own results management capabilities.

At the first round table held in Washington in 2002, you remember that we explored the strategic context for results based management, the challenges of day to day management for development results and the role of ex-post evaluation. At that time, I reminded that our borrowers had sent a clear message to us. They wanted a clear picture of the value added provided by their relation with the Bank, which makes a lot of common sense. They were therefore every bit as interested in results management as the Bank itself. And you remember that our conclusions on the table were to:

1. Address the results issue at all stages of our project cycle.
2. Emphasize the importance of partnership and country ownership in achieving country results;
3. Take concerted action to support our borrowers in their efforts to build their own monitoring and evaluation capacity.

Since that meeting, we have taken some important steps in this direction:

First, we have established a Development Effectiveness Office to lead and coordinate our corporate agenda in this issue of monitoring, measuring and managing for development results.

Second, we have been realigned our country strategy and programming process to emphasize the achievement of mutually agreed country and sector targets.

Third, we have expanding our training efforts of our staff and counterpart staff in borrowing member countries to have a common understanding of the performance indicators.

Fourth, we have been developing some new instruments to strengthen borrowing institutions in data gathering, monitoring and evaluation, and also we have streamlined internal procedures to emphasize results measurement as a basic management tool.

In the course of these efforts, which have necessarily involved consensus building among our staff, country offices, senior management, board of directors, we have accepted these 5 basic principles that I would like to share with you:

• We must take the challenge of development effectiveness very seriously and we must be fully committed to improve our ability to measure, monitor and manage for results.
• We must strengthen our relationship with other multilateral and bilateral agencies in order to share current thinking and best practices, and this is what we are doing currently with our colleagues, with other institutions.
• Our borrowers have greater stakes in establishing relevant performance targets and collecting the data needed to manage for results. The IDB is committed to supportborrowing agencies building and sustaining institutional capacity for data collection, monitoring and evaluation.
• It is essential that aid agencies avoid overburdening borrowers with requesting information that from the borrower’s perspective is needlessly overlapping, duplicative or expensive. For this reason, the IDB believes it is important for all of us to promote consistency and harmonization concerning results measuring and monitoring.
• 5.At last, multilateral and bilateral agencies should ultimately be working towards the common goal of establishing monitoring and evaluation systems in borrowing countries that are designed to meet their needs and to adapt our own performance reporting requirements accordingly.

Looking at today’s agenda, I am gratified to see that we will be touching upon many of these issues. I am further encouraged by the depth and breadth of the experience of the speakers who will be addressing us on these subjects from different perspectives, notably including borrowing member countries themselves.

If I may be permitted to leave you with a single thought to bear in mind during this discussion, it is simply that:

Development effectiveness requires efficient management to achieve shared goals. It is not something anyone of us can achieve on our own but is something that we can achieve together. Let us learn from one another in finding practical and pragmatic solutions to the challenges that represent the next step forward in managing for development results.

Thank you very much.