Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to this dinner in Oslo City Hall. The building where we are gathered today is redolent of Norwegian history. Every year the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in the Oslo City Hall. Brave leaders and concerned people from all over the world have come to this hall to be honored for their work for peace and social justice.

The artwork in this building outlines Norwegian history. It highlights our struggle to emerge from one of the poorest countries in Europe a century ago, to become a prosperous, industrialized country. The paintings depict how entrepreneurs and enterprises - large and small - have flourished, and through these enterprises, how poverty has been alleviated, how economic growth and social development have been achieved.

An important lesson we have learned from our model of economic development is the pivotal role of a strong, well-functioning public sector, guaranteeing equal rights and actively promoting both labor rights and business interests. Ours is a mixed economy, with extensive public-private cooperation and partnership. Social awareness and social responsibility are prominent features of our development model, much thanks to the work and achievements of organized labor through 130 years. Norwegian companies have recognized the importance of the education, the health and the well-being of its work force for the functioning and reputation of the company – and indeed for the state of the entire economy. The concept of corporate social responsibility is increasingly being endorsed, in developed and developing countries alike, not only by companies, but also by consumers, civil society and the media.

Gatherings such as this, with men and women representing every region, many cultures, languages and religions - and an array of public, private and civil society interests - provide important opportunities to create partnerships and to strengthen social relationships. The common interest that brings us together today is the need to do more to reduce the vast disparities between the lives of the rich and the lives of the poor – ultimately, to make globalization work for the benefit of all.

The key to this lies in freeing the capacities of the poor themselves. Among the very few things evenly distributed in this world of ours, human talent stands out in importance. Though not yet sufficiently applied in practice, the notion of freeing the capacities of the poor is far from new.

In his book On Reaching the Poor (1984), Professor Mohamed Yunus encapsulated the notion of our responsibilities to the poor. He wrote:

"The planner’s job is to design programs that make constraints
crumble away and help the poor use their full capacity"

Enterprise is increasingly recognized as pro-poor, that is, as a mechanism that can do much to help the poor "use their full capacity". The planner’s job – and all of us here are planners in this sense – is to help create a just and sustainable environment that can make this happen.

It is very easy to get lost in the specifics and trifles of trade policy, collateral requirements, public-private partnerships, and all the rest. The Devil, as we know, is in the details. But so is development! These development details need a context if they are to work at all - and certainly if they are to work with the necessary synergies that world poverty demands.

In our work today and tomorrow, we are seeking to articulate some of the devilish details that can make enterprise more accessible to the poor. The challenge is daunting. But we must not be discouraged.

For Norwegians this building is a reminder of what can be done.

The agenda of our symposium reminds all of us of what must be done.

On behalf of the Government of Norway, I wish to thank all of you for coming to Oslo to share your knowledge and to help further a common cause – development for all.

Thank you very much.