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Statement by H. E. Mr. LIU Zhenmin, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of China to the UN, at the Fifth Committee of the 64th Session of the UN General Assembly, under Agenda Item 132: Proposed Program Budget for the Biennium 2010-2011

2009-10-29 19:00
 

New York, 29 October 2009

(Photo Courtesy: Xinhua / Bai Jie)

Mr. Chairman,

The Chinese delegation would like to thank Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his introduction to the biennial program budget of the UN for 2010-2011, and the chairperson of the ACABQ Ms. Susan McLurg for her presentation of the Committee's report. While associating itself with the statement made by the representative of the Sudan on behalf of the G77 and China, my delegation would like to make the following observations and proposals:

Firstly, we ought to improve the efficiency of resource utilization. We support the priorities defined by the General Assembly for the biennium of 2010-2011. We hope that the resources of the UN can be allocated and used equitably around the three pillars of peace and security, development and human rights and in the eight priority areas. We hope that the Secretariat will, in view of the limited overall resources, reduce to a minimum administrative cost, steadily improve efficiency in order to save more resources for programs and activities related to development so as to truly benefit the developing countries which constitute the majority of the UN Member States.

Secondly, we ought to maintain a rational and appropriate budgetary growth. In recent years, UN operations and activities in the areas of peace and security, development and human rights have been growing in scale and magnitude. We are of the view that maintaining rational and appropriate growth of the UN budget is essential for guaranteeing the smooth work of the UN, especially for ensuring adequate funding for programs and activities mandated by the Member States. At the same time, in order that the UN continues to play and strengthen its role in international affairs, a stable and sustainable financial basis is indispensable. The UN should work under the principle of matching practical needs with available resources, take into full consideration the capacity to pay of Member States, especially developing Member States, and formulate the budget in the spirit of practicing economy so as to avoid excessive budgetary growth.

Thirdly, we ought to ensure the completeness of the budget. We have noticed that in recent years, biennial budgets formulated by the Secretariat were all open-ended without providing for all resources needed for the relevant biennia. Instead, resource requirements were constantly added during the implementation of the budgets, resulting in a situation where revised biennial allocations far surpassed the biennial budgets approved by the GA. As pointed out by the ACABQ, in the proposed biennial program budget for 2010-2011, the Secretariat has not included requirement for resources that have been or will be addressed in separate reports, such as safety and security, business continuity management and enterprise resource planning. Both the ACABQ and the Member States have on many occasions requested the Secretariat to avoid a piece-meal approach to the budgetary process and we hope to hear in this regard further explanation from the Secretariat to the relevant questions raised by the ACABQ.

Fourthly, we ought to effectively improve result-based budgeting. We support the view of the ACABQ that the current RBB mainly focuses on establishing and improving the RBB mechanism and meeting the requirement of the budgetary process, but it doesn't reflect the managerial plans of the entities involved, or apply itself as an effective managerial tool. In result-based budgeting, quantifying the resources devoted to outputs is the key and the relations between resources and output and performance constitute an important element in the concept of RBB. In our view, there is no need to give an exhaustive listing of all outputs in the budget report, instead, sufficient reasons should be provided to explain the relations between these outputs and the required resources.

Mr. Chairman,

The 2010-2011 biennial program budget is an important item on the agenda of this session. The Chinese delegation attaches great importance to this agenda item and will take a positive and cooperative approach to participate in the relevant consultations in a constructive manner. We hope that all Member States will display the spirit of pragmatism and flexibility, and engage in full consultations in a joint effort to complete the consideration of questions related to the budget.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

 

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