UN trims 2012-2013 budget by 5%
Source: Agencies |
December 26, 2011, Monday
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THE United Nations General Assembly has approved a 5 percent decrease in the UN's budget for 2012-2013 over the previous two-year period, only the second time in 50 years that the world body has slashed its spending.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the 193-nation General Assembly for cutting costs at a time when governments globally are cutting expenditures and implementing austerity measures in response to the global financial crisis.
"I am here to thank you for solidifying, with me, our compact to make the most of our resources ... to cut fat ... and to continue fulfilling every one of the critical global mandates entrusted to the United Nations," Ban said in the written text of a speech distributed by his press department.
The deal for a US$5.15 billion budget, which compares with US$5.41 billion spent in 2010-2011, came after marathon negotiations that ran all night from Friday into Saturday. A deal was not clinched until Saturday morning.
As in past years, the biennial budget negotiations were marked by a tussle between poor countries seeking to raise UN development spending and major developed countries - the biggest budget contributors - trying to rein the figures in as they struggle to reduce spending in their own national budgets.
US Deputy Ambassador Joe Torsella, who focuses on UN management and reform at the US mission, welcomed what he said was "a budget for a strengthened, more efficient, and more effective United Nations."
He said in a statement that the average increase in UN biennial budgets over the last two decades has been 5 percent. In 1998 the General Assembly cut the UN budget compared to the previous two years, the only other time it had done so in the past 50 years, Torsella said.
The so-called core UN budget voted through on Saturday does not include peacekeeping, currently running at over US$7 billion a year and approved in separate talks, or the costs of several major UN agencies funded by voluntary contributions from member states.
The US has long charged that the world body is a bloated and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy that wastes taxpayers' money.
The US, which pays 22 percent of the UN budget, is the biggest financial contributor.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the 193-nation General Assembly for cutting costs at a time when governments globally are cutting expenditures and implementing austerity measures in response to the global financial crisis.
"I am here to thank you for solidifying, with me, our compact to make the most of our resources ... to cut fat ... and to continue fulfilling every one of the critical global mandates entrusted to the United Nations," Ban said in the written text of a speech distributed by his press department.
The deal for a US$5.15 billion budget, which compares with US$5.41 billion spent in 2010-2011, came after marathon negotiations that ran all night from Friday into Saturday. A deal was not clinched until Saturday morning.
As in past years, the biennial budget negotiations were marked by a tussle between poor countries seeking to raise UN development spending and major developed countries - the biggest budget contributors - trying to rein the figures in as they struggle to reduce spending in their own national budgets.
US Deputy Ambassador Joe Torsella, who focuses on UN management and reform at the US mission, welcomed what he said was "a budget for a strengthened, more efficient, and more effective United Nations."
He said in a statement that the average increase in UN biennial budgets over the last two decades has been 5 percent. In 1998 the General Assembly cut the UN budget compared to the previous two years, the only other time it had done so in the past 50 years, Torsella said.
The so-called core UN budget voted through on Saturday does not include peacekeeping, currently running at over US$7 billion a year and approved in separate talks, or the costs of several major UN agencies funded by voluntary contributions from member states.
The US has long charged that the world body is a bloated and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy that wastes taxpayers' money.
The US, which pays 22 percent of the UN budget, is the biggest financial contributor.
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