*  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank the Commonwealth Secretariat and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for the invitation to deliver opening remarks at this joint workshop on what I consider to be one of the more critical issues facing small vulnerable economies, but which ten years after the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development has been largely ignored by the international policy community.
While developing countries have made much progress in meeting the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to free humanity from extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease by 2015, substantial challenges still remain, especially in reaching the most vulnerable. Multiple financial, food, energy and economic crises, which often respect no borders, further aggravate matters.