Cabinet Affairs Minister Protais Musoni, Friday, said that the just concluded ninth government and Development Partners’ Meeting (DPM) laid a solid foundation for enhancing the quality of development cooperation in support of the government’s efforts to improve the lives of its people.

The meeting held under the theme: "Effective Aid to leverage Private Investments and the Millennium Development Goals,” resulted in the adoption of the Kigali Statement of Action (KSA) which highlights several concrete actions and measures agreed upon.

While closing the session on behalf of Prime Minister Bernard Makuza, Musoni stressed that with the adoption of the document "which shows our joint commitments to maximize the use of aid resources, it is evident that that this year’s DPM has been an important milestone for the aid effectiveness agenda.”

"We shall continue to improve in this area in order to buttress effective management of the available resources for the good of our people,” Musoni pledged, while also inviting development partners to "use our systems” to reduce transaction costs.

The UN Resident Coordinator, Aurelien Agbenoci, on behalf of development partners, also noted that the session had been successful.

"As development partners, we look forward to continue this dialogue and spirit of partnership to join our efforts to support Rwanda in realizing its goal,” he said.

"Rwanda is known as a country of a thousand hills. But in my view, Rwanda should also be known as a country of a thousand opportunities.”

The KSA highlights eight commitments or concrete actions and, a way forward.

In terms of commitments, it notes that in the spirit of partnership and mutual accountability, the government and its development partners remain committed to finalize the Joint Governance Assessment (JGA) report and use it as the mechanism through which the government and its artners interact on key governance issues, track progress and engage in open dialogue.

Noting the significant role of the private sector in Rwanda’s economic development, the meeting agreed to make further efforts to strengthen the sector.

They also committed to engage in regional and global aid effectiveness dialogue to contribute substantively to the upcoming High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea.

Initiated in 1995, the DPM is a biennial strategic forum for policy dialogue between government and its development partners and allows government to showcase its major achievements as well as constraints in implementing its development plans, among others. It is also an occasion for open discussion with regards to the management of external development assistance.

The objective of the 2010 DPM was to agree on concrete actions to address bottlenecks and key constraints to aid effectiveness and develop a strategy to further enhance synergies between aid and private investment for the attainment of MDGs.

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