国内英语新闻:China urges overall performance management of UN budgetary resources

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy has called for more attention to be paid to the overall performance management of United Nations budgetary resources, China's permanent mission to the UN said in a release on Wednesday.

"The Organization is currently faced with financial difficulties which require all parties to actively fulfill their obligations in terms of assessed contributions," Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations Ma Zhaoxu told the General Assembly's Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) on Tuesday.

The committee appealed to member states to tackle a complex agenda that includes management issues, the secretary-general's reform agenda and the possible readjustment of a methodology used to assess member states' contribution to the regular budget as well as its peacekeeping operations.

Ma said that the capacity-to-pay principle must continue to serve as a basis for calculating the scale of assessments.

Some inappropriateness now in the methodology of calculating assessments blurs the distinction between developed and developing countries, he said.

Concerning the scale of assessments for peacekeeping operations, China supports the principle of collective responsibility and special responsibility, the ambassador noted.

Regarding human resources management reform, Ma said "China is deeply concerned about the unresolved issue of inequitable geographic distribution of United Nations staff in the Secretariat and hopes for an early solution."

Despite experiencing rapid economic growth, "China is still a developing country with a per capita income that ranks seventieth in the world," the ambassador stressed, noting that its assessed contributions to the United Nations and its peacekeeping operations are set to increase in 2019-2021.

"For a developing country like China, this is certainly not a small amount," he added.

The Secretariat should take effective measures to strengthen budget performance, financial discipline, supervision and accountability. "Money must be spent effectively and those not doing so must be held accountable," he said.

At Tuesday's organizational meeting, the Fifth Committee approved a wide-ranging program of work that enveloped crucial financial and human resources issues meant to help manage the UN's thousands of employees and keep its vast global operations running smoothly.

It also began discussing whether the methodology used to establish the scale of assessments for the regular budget and the peacekeeping operations should be adjusted, a task that is taken up every three years.