Mr. President, Madame Moderator, Excellencies, Distinguished Panellists,

1. I have the honour to make this intervention on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. At the outset please allow me to express my appreciation to all of you for your insightful views on how best to mainstream the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to achieve the best result from the UN development system in a coherence and cohesive manner.

Madame Moderator,

2. In addition to many of the important issues raised by the distinguished panellists, please allow me to raise two important issues the Group would like to reiterate on mainstreaming the 2030 Agenda, including other commitments we adopted in 2015, into the work of the UN development system to achieve system-wide cooperation and coordination in particular at the country level.

3. First, the Group would like to reiterate that eradication of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, still remains the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for achieving the 2030 Agenda. At the country level, UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) must be aligned with national development plans and strategies taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of social and economic development to ensure national ownership. 4. In this regard, harmonizing agency-specific programming instruments and processes in alignment with respective national UNDAF must be ensured. Moreover, at the global level, the Group underlines the importance of mainstreaming the 2030 Agenda in the context of the midterm review and elaborations of strategic plans and frameworks of all entities of the UN development system to ensure consistency and alignment of their respective works and mandates with the objectives of the Agenda. In addition, efforts to achieve collaborative procurement, vendor management and long-term agreement availability and use among other important efforts to ensure coherence and cohesive of delivery of service by the UN development system must be further strengthened. At the country level, UN Country Teams and operations staff must continue to harmonize business practice in their respective operation support to national governments as guided by the QCPR resolution 67/226.

5. Second, the Group would like to emphasize that in addressing long-term and sustainable development, the UN development system needs to take into account the importance of promoting national capacity building in developing countries. As highlighted in the Secretary-General's report on implementation of the 2012 QCPR, capacity building is and will remain a core function of the UN development system for development planning, disaggregated data collection and analysis, implementation, reporting and monitoring and evaluation, it is therefore of paramount importance that all UN entities strengthen their efforts in their development of national capacities.

6. In this regard, revising capacity development strategies and approaches, providing guidance and tools on capacity development, and enhancing support to country offices in developing national capacities by the UN system at the global and regional levels must be taken into consideration to produce technical, sectoral and functional capacities of UN entities to improve their effectiveness in developing national capacities through greater coordination and harmonization with focus on results-based capacity development and better access to knowledge and information resources at the country and regional level.

Madame Moderator,

7. The Group of 77 and China would like to reiterate once again that stronger coherence and cohesive delivery of services by UN development system is very much needed to support developing countries in their efforts to implement and achieve sustainable development. And only through working together side-by-side in a non-silo approach would enable us to move in the right direction towards that common goal.

I thank you.