Administrative and budgetary issues

Concluding the first part of its resumed sixty-fifth session, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon approved by consensus and recommended to the General Assembly resolutions on the Capital Master Plan, Joint Inspection Unit and various aspects of the programme budget for the 2010-2011 biennium.

The Fifth Committee today took up proposed budgets for two United Nation’s special political missions — namely its Office in Burundi and its representative to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board — in the amounts of $23.1 million and $24,600 net, respectively.

Nearly three years after its start in May 2008, the complex, multi-year overhaul of the historic United Nations Headquarters — known as the Capital Master Plan — was on track for completion between 2012 and 2014 with cost overruns of the $1.87 billion project now reduced to $80 million, Secretariat officials told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) at its first resumed session today.

The Fifth Committee today approved the work plan for a three-week resumed session that will let delegates consider a Capital Master Plan now running more than $80 million over budget, the work of the Joint Inspection Unit, special political missions and other issues with financial implications for the 2010-2011 budget cycle.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today wrapped up the main part of a sixty-fifth session that aimed to boost the Organization’s efficiency by overhauling how tens of thousands of staff around the globe are hired, trained and paid, while continuing to modernize its outdated information and communications technology system.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) met today to consider the financial implications of a General Assembly high-level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases slated for September 2011.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today approved by consensus a draft resolution on the United Nations pension system, as it also considered the 2011 financing needs of the tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, along with the financial implications of three draft resolutions that emerged from the Third Committee and General Assembly this fall.

As the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took up the proposed financing for 29 special political missions for 2011, some delegates warned of the problems posed by the expanding and fluctuating financial demands those missions were placing on the Organization’s budget resources, an impact even seen in the outline presented today by Secretariat officials for the 2012-2013 budget cycle.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took up the Secretariat’s request for an assessment of $652.5 million to finance the ongoing operations of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). This assessment would make up the second portion of the $1.36 billion, approved by the General Assembly with its 24 June resolution 64/275, for the Mission’s operation from 1 July 2010 to the end of next June.