Your Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Friends,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to Norway and to Oslo. I hope you all had a safe journey, that you are pleased with your accommodation, and that you brought a little more than business attire with you. During the period of hard work that lies ahead I hope you will have an opportunity to pause to enjoy some time off as well. Our staff will go to great lengths to help make this both a productive and, we hope, memorable stay for you all.

We are very pleased to co-host, together with UNCTAD Secretary General Ricupero, this symposium on the role of the private sector in enhancing productive capacity in the least developed countries. The heading we have chosen for the symposium is "Partnership for Development". Now, I would like to go straight to our agenda.

One of the most compelling questions of our time is: How can we reach our common goal of halving poverty by 2015? Decades of evidence from around the world provide one short answer: Through sustained economic growth.

In the process of growth and development, private enterprise plays an irreplaceable role. In fast-growing economies the private business sector is by far the largest source of employment and investment, and a significant source of tax revenue. The private sector and foreign companies provide market outlets, trading capacity and technology transfers. Private enterprise is also an important source of less tangible, but critically important elements, such as openness to ideas, innovation, opportunity and empowerment.

In order to attract productive private investment – whether from local or foreign sources – an enabling environment is critically important. This means supportive macroeconomic policies and institutional and legal frameworks. This also means policy consistency within trade, investment and enterprise development. Good governance, political stability and solid physical and social infrastructure provide a foundation that will support a flourishing private sector and sustained growth. Good relations between the business community and organized labor are essential.

Moreover, the importance of the health and well being of the population for sustainable economic development cannot be overrated. In this respect, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is one of the most serious threats to development of our time. Whatever we do and wherever we come from, we must join the fight to combat HIV/AIDS.

Creating an enabling environment for investment is the responsibility of the authorities in any country. However, other stakeholders – the international community, the private sector, the trade unions – can, and should, contribute to this goal. Resources and expertise must be pooled. Public-private partnerships for development, based on common interests, must be created.

Public finance and development assistance are far from sufficient to curb poverty and ensure development in the poorest countries. This is the most obvious reason why we need the involvement and active participation of a responsible private sector – local and foreign. This is why we need to optimize synergies between public and private financing; why we need new alliances.

Your presence here today is testimony to the new era of partnership across the public-private divide. A few years ago it would have been fairly unusual to have such a gathering of representatives of national governments, national and international donors and development agencies, non-governmental organizations and large and small businesses – in an atmosphere of openness and interaction.

Today there is a much greater sense of the inevitability of globalization and acceptance of an increasingly integrated world economy, largely driven by market forces. We are all aware of the benefits deriving from – and the risks associated with – globalization. The main challenge lies in securing a more equitable distribution of its benefits.

Despite some elements of pure hooliganism, the events in Prague and Seattle testify to the need to develop a more broadly acceptable and inclusive globalization formula. We must not dismiss globalization. We certainly cannot stop it. Globalization will proceed. Our common task is to help give it direction. Part of the answer must be integration. The social and economic deprivation of many of the world’s poorest countries is compelling testimony to the need to integrate these countries more fully into the world economy. The question is not whether or not to do so, but how and on what terms.

This, ultimately, is also the underlying theme of this conference: While recognizing that globalization produces a wealth of opportunity, we must seek ways and means to enable all the world’s peoples to share in the benefits that accrue. We must make globalization work for the poor. Private sector development is essential to this mission.

We have learned much about the dos and don’ts of private sector development. We have learned a lot about how to adapt and transfer lessons learned from country to country and culture to culture – perhaps most impressively in the "Asian Tiger" economies. But we certainly have much more to learn, especially about how to accomplish private sector development in the least developed countries.

This symposium is a stepping stone in this learning process. And these are the three key issues that I would like this symposium to address:

• First, how to ensure that there is a sufficiently enabling environment in place to bring out the full potential of the private sector;
• Second, how to make sure that the resulting economic growth really contributes to poverty alleviation and social equity, and
• Third, how to draw upon the power of partnership to create opportunities and benefits for the many – as opposed to the few – and to do so quickly and efficiently.

Our task is to identify and highlight effective innovation in three specific areas:

• Policies and measures to attract foreign direct investment to LDCs;
• Measures to strengthen local enterprise, to ensure the long-term local capacity to absorb and replicate the benefits of foreign direct investment, and
• Measures to ensure that local enterprises have access to financing through local banking systems and partnerships with foreign investors.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Twenty years ago, I attended the first UN Conference on the least developed countries, together with many others, as a representative of a Norwegian NGO. Our participation then was a sign of solidarity with the poorest countries. Twenty years later, this solidarity is still the heart of the matter. But today it is also the very legitimacy of the global economic system which is at stake.

We have not achieved the goals set out in 1981. It is high time that we choose a practical and action-oriented approach to alleviate poverty in the LDCs. We should increase aid and trade. And we have also learned this: Mobilizing the creativity, the competence and the capital of the business community is a prerequisite for bringing about sustainable economic growth. Not sufficient in itself, not a goal in itself, but a means to an end, and a necessary condition to fight poverty.

I hope that this symposium will provide important input to the United Nations’ 3 ^rd> Conference on the least developed countries, to be held in Brussels in May. Hopefully, our work will be reflected in a new program of action - a program better adapted to new challenges and more potent in helping to bring about growth and poverty reduction in the LDCs. I wish you two productive days. I look forward to your assessment and recommendations in the summing-up session tomorrow afternoon.

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Two years ago, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan launched the Global Compact. He asked the business community to embrace and enact nine core principles based on universally accepted agreements on human rights, labor standards and the environment. He invited business leaders to join the UN in building the missing social infrastructure of the new global economy.

Taking inspiration from the Secretary General - as well as from UNCTAD’s work on private sector investment promotion in LDCs - I am pleased to announce that Norway will contribute 2 million NOK to strengthen the LDC component of the Global Compact. In the same vein, we will contribute 1 million NOK to the International Trade Centre (ITC), to support a Business Sector Round Table at the Brussels conference.

Again, welcome to Oslo – and good luck with your deliberations.