Commonwealth Secretary General Donald C. McKinnon (L) is watched by Sri Lankan Home Minister Sarath Amunugama as he addresses reporters at a press conference in Colombo, 11 September 2006. - AFP

Let me first express my thanks for the warm and generous welcome we have received from President Rajapaksa, the government and people of Sri Lanka.

A little less than two years ago, through TV and Radio, I was calling on Commonwealth governments everywhere to come to the aid of Sri Lanka and several others of our members in this region which had been struck by that dreadful tsunami.

The response was swift and generous.

The Commonwealth has since turned its attention to improving natural disaster warning and responses. And I was very pleased to see some of this in the field not far from Colombo this morning. It reminded me - coming from the Pacific where we have more than a fair share of cyclones - that rebuilding shattered communities is extremely difficult and time-consuming and expensive. It can also become politicised.

That led me to think about my own two decades in politics including a decade as a Minister. So often, politicians are criticised for taking decisions with an eye only to the short term.

But even if our decisions could be short-term in their scope and impact, we were always conscious of the long term. We would try to recognise the early trends and warning signs, calculate their consequences in the distant future, and think how best to act accordingly.

If "long term view, short term decision-making" is a fair description of local and even national political life, it certainly does not characterise Commonwealth Ministerial meetings.

And as we know, Sri Lanka’s long-term decision-making of taking younger and new players into your national cricket eleven is leaving the rest of us shaking at the crease!

So occasions like the one on which we are embarking in the next few days are a chance to take a long term view; to improve our vision by seeing issues through the lenses of others from all over the world; and to arrive at decisions with long term and far-reaching impact.

Some of you, like me, will have arrived here on SriLankan Airlines. And some of you may also have seen the in-flight magazine in which I contributed an article. It conveys the essence of the message I want to make today.

Your meeting here this week has the potential to change people’s lives fundamentally. Commonwealth Finance Ministers have an impressive pedigree. When your predecessors met in Barbados in 1987, they were the first to consider seriously the possibility of cancelling debts that hung like millstones around the necks of low income countries. The idea seemed outlandish at the time - but the Commonwealth pushed it, far beyond its own circles. Our proposals led to the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative in 1996. 10 years later, about $120 billion of debt has been cancelled for 30 countries.

Commonwealth Finance Ministers broke further ground in the ‘90s when they were the first to give full voice to the concerns of small states. With 32 of our 53 member countries having populations of less than 1.5 million people, our work with the World Bank on tackling the vulnerabilities and development challenges facing small states is ground-breaking.

When 53 nations come together freely and equally, representing 30% of humanity, 25% of all countries, 20% of global trade, and 80% of all those on this planet living in poverty, then we have tremendous potential, and an obligation to speak up.

On debt, there has been progress as I said, including the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. But there are a number of implementation challenges. I am particularly concerned to avoid what I see as, "paying once and claiming credit twice" where donors’ debt reduction payments are claimed as part of aid flows when they should be additional to them. We also need to ensure that countries never again incur excessive debt.

The picture on aid is not as favourable. Although the headline aid figures for 2005 will show a sharp rise, this is due to exceptional amounts of debt relief for a few countries. The underlying trend is falling well short of what is needed to meet the Gleneagles pledge. Yet we know -and our own country studies of Tanzania, Ghana, Malawi and Bangladesh confirm this - that there are many poor countries that could absorb and make excellent use of really substantial increases.

Almost as important are aid modalities. Again, Commonwealth studies show that donors are making only slow progress on the commitments made to align their aid with country priorities, use country systems, increase direct budgetary support and enhance aid predictability.

Developing countries have their own commitments to keep as well. One of the most important is to improve governance and tackle corruption - absolutely essential elements for successful development. This will be one of the issues at the Development Committee meeting in Singapore. In the Commonwealth, we know this is not an ‘all or nothing’ issue. No country that I know of is perfect.

Incidentally, let me pay due acknowledgement to Finance Ministers for their initiative last year in seeking a reversal in the decline of the CFTC - our Commonwealth aid fund. Ministers decided last September to pursue an increase of 6% per annum in real terms for each of the next five years. Heads of Government endorsed that when they met in Malta.

Now we must convert that decision into reality. Some of the CFTC pledges made last year already met the 6% real growth target, and I am hopeful that all your pledges will do so this week.

One of the biggest disappointments in trade has been the suspension of the Doha Round. We face a real risk of unravelling global trade agreements, with a proliferation of bilateral and regional deals that we can be sure will not be to the advantage of the poorest or smallest. I hope we can have some discussion of what the Commonwealth can do to get things back on track.

A highlight this year in your meeting will be consideration of the special theme - an agenda for growth and livelihoods. We have an excellent paper from Professor Acharya which I commend to you. There are two things that struck me about it myself. One is that the core elements of the so-called, "Washington Consensus" remain valid for sustained growth. But, secondly, it is crucial that policies are tailored to individual countries and their circumstances.

Let me conclude by mentioning two other issues where the Commonwealth voice has been strong. The first is in representing the interests of small states. We now have the final version of the review of the conclusions of the 2000 task force.

The second is in promoting changes to increase the voice and representation of developing countries at the IMF and World Bank. It looks as if, at last, we will get some agreement in Singapore to reform IMF quotas. The more we have Commonwealth consensus around such matters as these two, the stronger we are.