Gathered today to discuss the Organization’s finances, delegates of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) once again prodded each other to make their full, timely financial payments to help the Secretariat ease a cash crunch in the regular budget and satisfy the mandates outlined in the United Nations Charter.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today began its examination of conference management, including issues related to overall costs, multilingual translation and interpretation, document issuance, and the use of resources and facilities, while approving proposed revisions to programme planning and evaluation rules as well as recommended ways to better implement results-based budgeting.
Delegates in the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) once again threw their support behind an independent panel now examining the internal justice system set up in 2009 to resolve disputes for tens of thousands of United Nations employees around the world.
The Organization’s financial indicators for 2015 were “generally sound and positive,” except for the cash position of the regular budget, whose funds had been depleted, the United Nations senior management official told the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today.
Delegates at today’s session of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) praised the Organization’s top auditing watchdog’s crucial work in keeping tabs on the finances of nearly two dozen United Nations entities responsible for spending billions of dollars each year.
Delegates today called on a United Nations oversight body to boost its capacity to investigate corruption, mismanagement of resources and sexual abuse, as the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) began its examination of such functions, amid fraud allegations involving a former General Assembly President.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today heard United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon formally unveil an initial budget proposal of $5.57 billion for the 2016-2017 budget cycle that begins 1 January 2016. The proposal was down 1.6 per cent, or $90.8 million, from the appropriation for the current two-year budget cycle that ends in December and up $10.2 million, or 0.2 per cent, from the budget outline figure set by the General Assembly nearly a year ago.
The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today began examining the United Nations’ programme planning, a critical process in the Organization’s regular budget formulation, while approving a recommendation that five Member States in arrears on dues payment be allowed to vote in the General Assembly.
Members of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) today called on each other to work together this session as they tackled a complex and ambitious agenda that included the Organization’s two‑year multi‑billion‑dollar budget for 2016-2017 and whether to re-adjust the methodology used over the next three years to assess Member States’ contribution to the regular budget as well as its peacekeeping operations.
Durga Prasad Bhattarai, Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) on 15 June 2015.
