On 30 March 2017, Her Excellency Ms. Victoria Kwakwa, Vice President of the World Bank for the East Asia and the Pacific paid a courtesy call on 

His Excellency Mr. Don Pramudwinai, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, before her attendance at the High-Level Brainstorming Dialogue (HLBD) on Enhancing Complementarities between the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development on 31 March 2017 at UNCC, Bangkok. The HLBD will be co-chaired by His Excellency Mr. Don Pramudwinai and Her Excellency Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, Executive Secretary of the UN ESCAP.

          During the courtesy call, Her Excellency Ms. Victoria Kwakwa, as a high level representative for the World Bank, affirmed her readiness to support ASEAN’s and Thailand’s efforts in promoting the “Complementarities Initiative”, while a variety of issues were discussed, including the enhancement of complementarities between the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Thailand’s initiatives for further cooperation between ASEAN and the World Bank regarding sustainable development such as cooperation on the ASEAN Centre on Active Ageing and Innovation, promotion of connectivity in ASEAN and the region, enhancement of capacity - building for Timor-Leste, and the strengthening of the ASEAN Secretariat. Apart from this, there was also a discussion on the cooperation between Thailand and World Bank in areas such as implementing post-disaster needs assessment (PNDA) and strengthening statistical capacity for a timely and reliable disaggregated data for measuring the SDGs progress. 

          Thailand has been mandated by the ASEAN Foreign Ministers at the Foreign Minister’s Meeting in Vientiane in February 2016 to be ASEAN coordinator on promoting the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. For that reason, this courtesy call is a useful introduction to the World Bank’s involvement regarding sustainable development, especially since the World Bank has world-class expertise on the issue that would benefit and could be a model case for ASEAN.