Mr. President, Excellencies, Colleagues,

1. In my capacity as Chair of the Group of 77, I have the pleasure of referring on the draft resolutions on “Review process of the implementation of General Assembly resolution 67/290 and 70/299 on the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the global level and resolution 72/305 on the strengthening of the Economic and Social Council”, which the Group attaches the greatest importance.

2. We would like to sincerely thank H.E. Mr. Alexander Marschik, Permanent Representative of Austria and H.E. Mr. Cheikh Niang, Permanent Representative of Senegal, as co-facilitators for these intergovernmental negotiations, for their continuous engagement, their tireless work and feedback throughout this process. We fully understand that despite all their efforts, it was at some point very difficult to bridge the different views and positions, in particular in light of the very relevant implications of this review for shaping our work in the coming years, for such a fundamental Organ of the United Nations as is the ECOSOC and the High-Level Political Forum as a platform for the follow up and review of the 2030 Agenda.

3. In keeping with this spirit of unity and constructiveness, the Group of 77 and China throughout the process continued to show maximum flexibility on various parts of the draft resolutions and their annexes. Including, at the last stage showing total flexibility on the HLPF draft resolution and its annex, even though there still remained several proposals in that draft that the Group was not comfortable with. The Group however, was unable to show the same level of flexibility on three paragraphs in the ECOSOC Review resolution and annex, and despite raising these concerns over and over, to no avail, the Group decided not to break the silence procedure, but to present amendments to address these concerns and reservations on the final text, as they were raised with the co-facilitators on several occasions.

4. The Group of 77 and China has stated from the very beginning of the process that it was important that we neither rewrite the 2030 Agenda nor discuss the mandates, remits and scope of the HLPF and the ECOSOC other than in a holistic, balanced and comprehensive manner, in an attempt to avoid putting focus on any particular development issue. The Group resisted counteracting partners’ inclusion of individual topic areas into the texts, and remains disappointed that the Co-facilitators were unable to bring us back to the regular practice of these reviews to have a more holistic approach.

5. The Group believes that in future reviews of the ECOSOC and the HLPF, we should have more dialogue about what is not working, the why it is not working and the how can we adjust or fix before we take decision of making drastic changes. The Group is of the firm believe that many of the segments of ECOSOC need adjustments in order that they may produce the sort of contribution to the overall work of the ECOSOC that will result in a successful ECOSOC that meets the development agenda expectations.

6. The Group wishes to place on the record that we are disheartened that on these two extremely important documents we were unable to find the sort of consensus that would have giving the impetus to the system to continue its work in a manner fit to its critical work.

7. We continue to insist that the Voluntary National Reviews should be country lead and that it should not be so structured that it acts as a deterrent to countries. The ideas of the VNR were to have countries feel free to report on their implementation of the 2030 Agenda, taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting policy space and priorities, giving others the chance through peer learning to gain or share their experiences, challenges, gaps and achievements.

8. The Group of 77 and China firmly believes that participation of major groups, academia, private sector and other relevant stakeholders bring added value to our processes. We also believe that their participation must be guided by the provisions set out in ECOSOC.

9. Mr. President, the Group of 77 and China continues to hope that we will be able to address sustainable development in its entirety and in all its three dimensions at all times giving each issue of development our undivided and equal attention, for as we know all are very much interrelated and intertwined.

Thank you.