China calls for "rational, appropriate" UN budgetary growth

A senior Chinese diplomat said here Thursday that the United Nations ought to "maintain a rational and appropriate" budgetary growth.

In an address to the Fifth Committee of the 64th session of the UN General Assembly, Ambassador Liu Zhenmin, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said maintaining rational and appropriate growth of the UN budget was essential for guaranteeing the smooth work of the world body, especially for ensuring adequate funding for programs and activities mandated by the member states.

"The UN should work under the principle of matching practical needs with available resources, take into full consideration the capacity to pay of member states, especially developing member states, and formulate the budget in the spirit of practicing economy so as to avoid excessive budgetary growth," Liu told the meeting on the proposed program budget for the biennium 2010-2011.

Besides, China believed that the United Nations should improve the efficiency of resource utilization, Liu said.

"We hope that the resources of the UN can be allocated and used equitably around the three pillars of peace and security, development and human rights and in the eight priority areas," he explained.

China also hoped the UN Secretariat would, in view of the limited overall resources, do its best in reducing administrative costs. China also advocated that the UN Secretariat steadily improve efficiency in order to save more resources for programs and activities related to development, so as to truly benefit the developing countries which constitute the majority of the UN member states.

Liu further stressed the need to ensure the completeness of the budget and effectively improve result-based budgeting.

As an important item on the agenda of this session, the Chinese delegation attached great importance to the 2010-2011 biennial program budget and would take a positive and cooperative approach to participate in the relevant consultations in a constructive manner, said the ambassador.

"We hope all member states will display the spirit of pragmatism and flexibility, and engage in full consultations in a joint effort to complete the consideration of questions related to the budget," Liu said.

Source: Xinhua