Speech by Country Director on the launch of CMDG Scorecards

Opening Remarks for UNDP Country Director Elena Tischenko
Workshop on Commune Database (CDB) and the progress of
Cambodia Millennium Development Goals (CMDG) at sub-national levels
6th December 2010
Cambodiana Hotel

Excellency Chhay Than, Minister of Planning,

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to welcome you to this workshop on Cambodian Millennium Development Goal Scorecards. A great deal of effort has gone into designing and testing these valuable tools, and it is my great pleasure  to join the Ministry of Planning today to launch them at this national workshop. I believe the MDG scorecards will play important role in helping Cambodia to meet the Millennium Development Goals and to redouble the efforts in the five years that we have left until the MDG target date of 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals have “people” at their core – as evidenced in their overarching aim to bring people out of poverty, ensure access to basic services, enjoy fundamental human rights, and by assisting countries to develop sustainably while protecting their environments.

However, with only five years remaining, acceleration of the progress in attaining the MDGs is the highest priority. At the global MDG Summit in New York in September, all participants agreed to renew efforts to fast-track achievement of the MDGs. This requires coordinated, effective, well-targeted efforts by the government, development partners, civil society, the private sectors and citizens. Also underpinning this is the need to measure progress. On this point I would like to commend Cambodia for its Commune Database, which not only provides data that helps us to measure progress toward MDGs, but allows disaggregate information  down to the commune level and  to identify  region-specific needs so that they can be targeted better.

Achieving MDGs requires effective service delivery at the sub-national levels, proper support from the national government, and the ways to assess and measure MDG performance at all the levels.

The Asia Pacific Regional Report 2009/2010, Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in an Era of Global Uncertainty,  identifies the importance of looking deeper than national averages if we are to achieve the MDG targets. It gives as an example neighboring Vietnam, where infant mortality rates for the ten-year period varied from 16 per thousand live births in the Central Coast region to 52 in the Northern Uplands. Such stark regional disparities also exist in Cambodia.

The Commune Database shows regional disparities by time series and at all levels—province, district and commune. For example, in 2010, the poverty rate in northeastern Cambodia (Preah Vihear, Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, Kratie, Stung Treng) was 37%, while in the coastal areas (Sihanoukville, Kampot, Kep, Koh Kong) the rate was of 25% or lower. In addition, the commune database also enables us to compare progress in poverty reduction in each province, district and commune over a number of years. For example, in the past six years, the number of people living on or below the poverty line in Stung Treng has been reduced 0.8 percent annually, while in Pailin the figure is 2.3 percent reduction.

Similarly, in education, according to the Education Management Information System, the Net Enrolment Rate in Lower Secondary Education varied in 2009/10 from about 11 percent in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri to 42 percent in Takeo and 55 percent in Phnom Penh. For MDG 4, Infant and Under Five mortality, data showed high infant and under five mortality rates in Ratanakiri-Mondulkiri, which are 122 per 1000 live births and 165 per 1000 live births respectively, while in Phnom Penh the figure for infant mortality is three times lower, namely 42 per 1000 live births and under five mortality is 52 per 1000 live births. For MDG 5, Maternal Mortality, the commune database shows that in Prey Vihear and Stung Treng, mortality rates are almost 10 times higher than in Phnom Penh and Kandal.

MDG scorecards help us to identify these disparities. They are an important tool because:
•    They help to bring to the attention of decision makers and communities the MDG targets that need priority action
•    They help set targets at the sub-national levels
•    They help monitor progress in achieving targets
•    They help citizens understand the progress in the MDGs and  participate in the decision making process
•    They help identify communes and districts that need more support
•    They help sub-national entities advocate for resource mobilization
•    They help allocate resources to the communes and districts that need it the most
•    And finally, they help define national and regional policies to reduce disparities.

UNDP has supported MoP over the past year to develop and test MDG scorecards, which as I briefly mentioned, are derived from data collected from the existing commune database (CDB). All provincial decision makers were included in the testing of the tool and results were shared with them. Provincial and district planning officers were also trained in the generation and use of MDG scorecards. These developments are particularly important and encouraging as Cambodia comes close to start the Implementation Programme (IP3) of the first three years of its new ten-year National Programme on Sub-National Development next year.

The experience so far has been very encouraging and we see that there is a lot of interest in Cambodia in moving this initiative forward. I am also very pleased to see that the Ministry of Planning at both national and sub-national levels have acquired the capacity to generate scorecards independently, and increasing number of local governments are beginning to use them.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Next year will mark the beginning of the new five-year collaborative programme between UNDP and the Royal Government of Cambodia. Focus on accelerating the progress in the MDGs will be the central feature of the programme.

UNDP will continue supporting the monitoring of NSDP implementation and related policy dialogues, the integration of national and sub-national planning within selected sectors, and the continued development of the commune database and the tools like MDG scorecards and methodologies for pro-poor budgeting. We hope also to see the use of the commune database to guide local economic development, identify climate change vulnerabilities, assess the effectiveness of social protection schemes, and support other important policies.
I am very pleased to participate today in this very timely presentation of progress that has been made this year to develop these tools and discuss their application.

We look forward to seeing the potential of these tools fully materialized with your full support for their further development and application.

Thank you.