The hope that the Fifth Committee, responsible for administrative and budgetary matters, would complete its work today was quickly dashed, as evidenced by the new meeting fixed immediately for next week. Before suspending its session this morning and deciding to meet again at 5 p.m., the members of the Commission examined, in a very brief session, the impact of variations in exchange rates and inflation on the draft budget revision of the International Mechanism to exercise the residual functions of the Criminal Tribunals, and those of the modifications to the Staff Regulations and Rules.
Reopening the doors of the Commission late in the afternoon, the President, Mr. Osama Mahmoud Abdelkhalek Mahmoud, of Egypt, certainly welcomed the progress but above all recognized that negotiations are continuing on several of the 18 points examined. We are on the home stretch, he encouraged, before handing over to the negotiation coordinators and emphasizing that from now on “every day counts, every hour counts”!
Negotiations on program planning are formally concluded, as will soon be those on the Capital Master Plan, the Information Technology and Communications Strategy, the Conference Plan and the scale of assessments for the distribution of the Organization’s expenses. of the United Nations, listed the President.
While congratulating the coordinators, he recalled that the Bureau, alongside the secretariat and the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), ensures that all draft resolutions and decisions are published in due time for adoption.
The coordinator of the negotiations on the integrated management software package -Umoja- promised his copy this very evening, while the delegations are a few hours away from a compromise on the program budget for 2024. The other coordinators asked for more time, invoking “the twists and turns of these processes. That of the negotiations on strengthening the long-term fight against racism and racial discrimination at the UN also spoke of an upcoming compromise, arousing the astonishment of the Group of 77 and China which said it did not see the outcome of no negotiation.
Taking his turn to speak, Mr. Chandramouli Ramanathan, Comptroller of the United Nations, warned that the UN cannot live without a budget just as it cannot execute it without cash. The UN Secretariat does not have enough money to continue its activities in 2024, the senior official expressed alarm, begging delegations, on behalf of the Secretary-General, to postpone the return to Member States of a sum of 136 million dollars. The UN cannot exist without a budget, but it can continue to function without agreement on certain items on the Commission’s agenda, the President observed.
This is not the end of the world. We will have time to get on with it when the session resumes and for now, delegations must spare no effort over the weekend to finish the work. Let’s make an appointment “in the early hours of next week”.
Before that, this morning, the Fifth Committee considered the incidences variations in exchange rates and inflation on the revised draft budget of the International Mechanism called upon to exercise the residual functions of the Criminal Tribunals, and those of modifications to the Staff Regulations and Rules. The update had the effect of increasing the spending forecast from $1.7 million to $3.7 million. The CCQAB it have no objection.
The preliminary cost update presented in the proposed program budget for 2024 only took into account inflation projections, which amounted to $64.2 million. The amount of resources requested was also adjusted taking into account the latest decisions of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) relating to the salaries of administrators, added the Director of the Finance Division who presented the rapport of the Secretary General. The proposed vacancy rates for 2024 are 11.1% for Professionals and 9.1% for General Service staff. The updated costs result in a net increase of $163.2 million, or $99 million more than the $64.2 million obtained in May 2023.
By an oral decision, the Commission recommended to the General Assembly to postpone consideration of the reports on amendments to the Staff Regulations and Rules until the first part of the resumed seventy-eighth session. The provisional provisions of the said document therefore remain in force. This did not prevent the Group of 77 and China from noting that while the main objective of the modifications is to streamline and simplify the policy framework in order to make it more readable and understandable, the proposed changes do not constitute not all a simplification.
They requested detailed information and clarification regarding the financial implications that could arise, in particular with regard to salary policy since 1 January 2023. They insisted that amendments involving general policy changes should first be proposed to the General Assembly for its approval. No policy change can be introduced without informing Member States and without the guidance of the General Assembly, they insisted, after reiterating the need to resolve the issue of under-representation of developing countries among the UN staff.
2023-12-16 00:30:01
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