STATEMENT BY MR. JOSÉ LUIS MACHINEA,
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF ECLAC, AT THE COMMENCEMENT
OF THE TWENTY-SECOND MEETING OF THE PRESIDING OFFICERS OF
THE REGIONAL COUNCIL FOR PLANNING OF ILPES, HELD WITHIN THE
FRAMEWORK OF THE THIRTIETH SESSION OF THE COMMISSION
San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tuesday, 29 June 2004
It is a great pleasure for me to share this podium with Mr. Santiago Marcovich, Under-Secretary for Multilateral Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru, and with Mr. Angel David Rodríguez, President of the Planning Board of Puerto Rico.
Distinguished delegates of the member Governments of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Council for Planning, First of all, I would like to thank you for your presence here today and for the ongoing support that your Governments have extended to ILPES for so many years. That support has played a vital role in providing technical guidance for the Institute’s work as well as in helping to finance its endeavours.
Secondly, I would like to assure you that my predecessor and I have been fully complying with the agreements reached at the last meeting of the Regional Council for Planning, held in Madrid in late 2002.
As part of this effort, the technical areas on which ILPES focuses its work and its internal structure have been reorganized so that it can serve as the Commission’s main training centre and thus fulfil the primary purpose for which it was created in 1962. In the coming months we will be adopting other decisions with a view to strengthening its work in this area. Examples include the formation of an academic advisory committee and measures for obtaining the financing needed to increase the number of courses offered by ILPES.
I have also confirmed the decision to include the organization of the annual Regional Seminar on Fiscal Policy within the Institute’s sphere of responsibility. This seminar is one of the foremost meetings of government experts that we convene each year. We have also decided to tie in this new assignment for ILPES with the request made by OECD for us to take over responsibility for the Latin American and Caribbean chapter of the Meetings of Senior Budget Officials organized by that institution.
ECLAC has also embarked upon a technical cooperation programme with the Government of Germany, through GTZ, which is to be executed over the next three years. Within this framework, we have assigned one of this programme’s three components to ILPES. This component, which deals with the modernization of the State, is composed of two modules –one on budget policy and management, and the other on the management of subnational development– that fall within the substantive areas in which ILPES concentrates its efforts. Accordingly, we hope that cooperation resources can be used to strengthen some of the Institute’s activities and to launch new ones.
Finally, I would like you to know that, following extensive discussions, United Nations Headquarters has authorized a new director’s post for ILPES at the D-1 level.
This new post will be circulated in the near future. Once the 60-day circulation period has ended, a new director will be selected from among the applicants and the commitment made in Madrid will be fulfilled.
I would like to reiterate my gratitude for the continuing support that your Governments have traditionally provided to ILPES and to urge you to renew that effort.
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