Mr. Vice-President, Madam Deputy Secretary-General, Excellencies, Distinguished delegates,

I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

At the outset, the Group of 77 and China would like to commend the Deputy Secretary- General as chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for this report and its annexes. We also commend the Assistant Secretary General for Development Coordination for the consultations with the Member States.

Excellencies,

The Group recognizes the critical role that the reinvigorated Resident Coordinator system as a cornerstone of the repositioned United Nations development system plays in supporting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achievement of 17 Sustainable Development Goals in programme countries. We commend the United Nations Sustainable Development Group for focusing its efforts on ensuring that the system fulfills its mandate and attaches great importance to the findings in the current report. Therefore, the Group reiterates its position that the Resident Coordinator system should focus on sustainable development. We believe that the system focusing on sustainable development remains critical in accelerating actions to implement the 2030 Agenda whose progress currently stands at 15%.

Excellencies,

We note with concern the low funding of the United Nations development system, which affects the ability of the system to provide the necessary support to developing countries to rescue the achievement of the SDGs. It remains critical to ensure that the system gets the required funding to support the needs and priorities of the programme countries. In this connection, the Group also calls upon the international community, in particular developed countries to increase the core funding for the entities of the UNDS. We reiterate our call to the Resident Coordinator system to ensure that the skillsets are matched with the needs and priorities of programme countries.

Excellencies,

We note that the System-wide commitments made through the Cooperation Frameworks do not uniformly translate to coordinated delivery in the country. We emphasize the better alignment of the development system entities' programming and configuration of their capacities with the Cooperation Frameworks, and strengthened monitoring and reporting on how entity-specific activities contribute to collective UN country teams in line with the national priorities and needs of programme countries. In this regard, we call for improved oversight through UN entities' governing bodies to ensure coordinated delivery at country level.

Finally, the G77 and China remains committed to engage actively and constructively in ensuring that the repositioned UN development system with the Resident Coordinator system as its cornerstone fulfils its mandate in line with the relevant General Assembly resolutions. We wish to assure Madam Deputy Secretary- General and the entire United Nations Sustainable Development Group of our counted support to ensure that the UN development system delivers on its mandate of supporting the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda. We look forward to engage constructively in this year's ECOSOC Operational Activities Segment.

I thank you.