Fifth Committee

The United Nations top management official today told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) that the Organization’s financial indicators for 2012 were generally “positive and sound” though the regular budget’s cash level was under pressure with $855 million of the $2.4 billion budget still outstanding.

Despite “significant risks” posed by its contractor’s performance, the United Nations project team in Ethiopia had succeeded in containing construction costs for new office space at the Addis Ababa-based Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and was expected to complete the project within budget, a senior management official told the Fifth Committee this morning as it considered the status of both that venture and a similar project at the United Nations Headquarters in Nairobi.

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today took up the scale of assessments for determining Member States’ contributions for the Organization’s 2013-2015 peacekeeping operations budget, with speakers strongly cautioning against any changes to the methodology that would place extra financial burdens on small developing countries and did not reflect the “special responsibility” of permanent Security Council members to maintain international peace and security.

Despite laudable progress in lowering its overall vacancy rate to 11 per cent and streamlining and strengthening work processes, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) still had work to do to improve its capacity to analyse risks and investigate complex financial and procurement cases, speakers said today as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) discussed programme monitoring and reviewed the efficiency of United Nations administrative and financial functioning.

As they considered the proposed scale for assessing Member States’ financial contributions to the Organization during the 2013-2015 period, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today differed over whether the scale was suitable to achieve their common goal of keeping the United Nations financially sound in an era of economic belt-tightening around the globe.

As they adopted their programme of work for the sixty-seventh session today, delegates of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) aired their concerns about the financing of special political missions, budgetary discipline and the Secretariat’s perennial late submission of documents.

The General Assembly’s Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today elected Miguel Berger (Germany) as Chair of its sixty-seventh session. Elected by acclamation, Mr. Berger has been the Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations since July 2010, after having worked in his country’s foreign service since 1988.

The Fifth Committee today concluded its second resumed substantive session by recommending financial arrangements for 14 United Nations peacekeeping operations, which, once endorsed by the General Assembly, would total slightly more than $7 billion.

Taking up a number of issues dealing with the financing of peacekeeping operations, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today also heard a request on behalf of United Nations field-based organizations to reconsider the four-week rest and recuperation cycle agreed in 2011 for staff at duty stations where “danger pay” applied.

While lauding the improved financial situation of the United Nations at year-end 2011 and further progress since then, delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) this afternoon expressed concern over the continued cash shortages in peacekeeping operations and the subsequent lag in payments to countries providing troops and police to such operations.