Closing Remarks by
His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed Bin Ahmed Bin Jassim Al-Thani
Minister of Economy and Commerce of the State of Qatar
Chairman of the Special Ministerial Meeting to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Group 77
São Paulo, Brazil
12 June 2004

Mr. Secretary General,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to express our deepest gratitude to you for having honored us by your presence at the Ministerial Meeting of the G77 and China as we commemorate our 40th anniversary. You have been a strong supporter and advocate of the vision, principles and objectives of our group. We know that you share full heartedly our principles and objectives. You yourself come from a developing country and understand fully the bases for our struggle to achieve development and bring peace and prosperity to all our people. This has been a very happy and special occasion and a tribute to our founding fathers who established this group along with UNCTAD 40 years ago.

We have the duty and responsibility to ensure that their vision and dreams are maintained and passed to the generation to come. In this meeting, we have adopted a ministerial declaration that addresses the key issues that are major concern to developing countries. Clearly while we are proud of our achievement to date, the struggle for development remains an ongoing agenda. We reinforced and asserted our solidarity and our commitment to strengthen our unity in the face of new challenges. To help us in this process, we have identified critical areas of work that we need to pursue in the coming years.

Mr. Secretary-General, as usual we continue to rely on your support and the assistance of our twin organization UNCTAD to fulfill our objectives.

Mr. Secretary General,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

With this, we come to the end of our work. It remains for me to thank the distinguished Ministers, Ambassadors and all other colleagues for their participation and constructive contributions.

And before closing the meeting, I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to the Executive Secretary of the Group 77 Mr. Mourad Ahmia and his staff for the excellent preparations made for this meeting and for his valuable continued support to the Group of 77.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to UNCTAD Secretariat for its continued support to the Group of 77.

I now declare the Special Ministerial Meeting of Group of 77 closed.