World Bank-Thailand NACC Launch New Knowledge-Sharing Partnership

Speech by Annette Dixon
World Bank Country Director, Thailand
At the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), and
The National Anti-Corruption Commission, the Royal Thai Government
October 26, 2009
Bangkok

Khun Somchit, Acting Secretary-General of the NACC,
Prof. Pakdee Pothisiri, Commissioner, the NACC,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to be with you here this afternoon at the signing ceremony of this Memorandum of Understanding between the NACC and the World Bank on a program of knowledge sharing and collaboration on a range of important governance and anti-corruption areas.

The World Bank has enjoyed a long standing partnership with Thailand on economic development for over 60 years. This partnership has spanned a range of sectors and covered many challenging issues, including those related to governance and external accountability, human and social development, infrastructure, and public sector development.

Good governance is increasingly becoming a focus of our work. The role played by external accountability institutions like the NACC in ensuring that the executive branch of government performs its duties within the confines of the laws and regulations is a necessary ingredient for promoting good governance and vital for controlling corruption.

The World Bank has formulated a Governance and Anti-Corruption strategy to support member countries for improving governance and reducing corruption. This strategy has two broad components – supporting member country systems for improving governance and controlling corruption and ensuring that corruption does not take place is World Bank projects and programs.

Supporting the efforts of the NACC in fostering good governance and reducing corruption is fully consistent with the World Bank’s GAC strategy. I am very happy that with this MOU we are taking our knowledge sharing partnership to a higher level of collaboration.

The World Bank is now developing a new Country Partnership Strategy for Thailand for the next two years. A key objective of this CPS will be to support Thailand in navigating through the current Global Financial Crisis, and to continue strengthening public sector to be able to provide better services to citizens. In this regard, NACC will be a key knowledge partner and this Memorandum of Understanding will be a vehicle for our two institutions to deepen our collaboration in a more systematic and strategic manner.

Many of our member countries wish to learn from Thailand’s development experience, and we particularly appreciate the fact that the NACC has also agree to participate in peer-to-peer knowledge exchange activities with other countries and to share the successes and challenges faced by Thailand with other countries that are striving to implement reforms that Thailand has already undertaken.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are looking forward to working with NACC on some very interesting issues within the MOU. For example, the work on improving the integrity of the public procurement processes will be key for increasing effectiveness and efficiency of the use of public resources. Similarly, technical collaboration on the assets and liability framework will also be interesting to ensure that this tool remains effective in the anti-corruption struggle. We are aware that these are sensitive matters and will focus our collaboration on pure technical and capacity building aspects.

I would like to end by thanking the NACC in hosting this ceremony today. We look forward to successful implementation of the MOU and wish the team Godspeed in their endeavors.  

Thank you