Mr President, I’m delivering this statement on behalf of List E countries.

First of all, the countries within our List express gratitude to the WFP Secretariat for preparation of this comprehensive document.

We welcome 2018 Annual Performance Report to ECOSOC and the FAO Council, which highlights WFP’s tireless efforts to improve food security situation in the world. Our support goes to all Programme’s activities aimed at saving and changing people’s lives.

Let us also address sincere words of gratitude to all WFP staff at the headquarters and especially in the field who work with complete dedication in most difficult environment and conditions.

We note with satisfaction that last year WFP not only efficiently responded to every Level 3 and 2 Emergency, but also attracted record contributions totaling 7,2 billion USD. This is the best possible evidence of the outstanding role WFP and its leadership plays among UN agencies, especially in the field of emergency response.

Another important figure relates to the impressive rise of the cash-based transfers component in the WFP’s activities, which totaled 1,76 billion USD in 2018. No doubt that this form of assistance has a great potential as one of the most preferred modalities of the assistance among the beneficiaries which i.e. stimulates local economies.

We mark the firm commitment of WFP and its Governance to continue to lead in the whole UN system in implementing innovations and using new digital technologies in its work.

WFP’s leading role in food security, logistics and emergency telecommunications helped United Nations and its partners to timely address the needs of the most vulnerable. We appreciate that WFP’s food-assistance tools supported also social safety nets of the affected communities.

WFP’s school feeding programmes remain one of the priority areas for us. 16.4 million schoolchildren assisted by WFP in 2018 is evidently not enough in the world where more than  73 million vulnerable children still do not receive school meals. Thus List E countries fully support the Agency’s intention to encourage and facilitate national government’s ownership and management of these programmes and will support them.

We welcome the efforts of the Secretariat and country offices in implementing the Integrated Road Map which involves the empowerment of the country offices and their potentials.

We acknowledge the importance of WFP´s positive attitude towards sharing the lessons learned with other UN Actors, especially Rome-based Agencies, and would like to encourage WFP to further continue this effort.

List E extends its support to the respective APR for 2018.