Tough, no-growth budget for 1996-1997.

• Position: General Assembly response to report from its Fifth Committee - UN finance

Appropriations amounting to just under $2.61 billion for the UN regular budget for the biennium 1996-1997 were adopted without a vote on 23 December by the General Assembly. Income for the same period was estimated at $471.4 million. A tough zero-growth budget, the total was $24 million less than spending approved for 1994-1995.

As projected expenditures represented a provisional total of $2.71 billion, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was asked to report back no later than 31 March 1996 with proposals to achieve the necessary $104 million in additional savings. This would be effected by identifying efficiency gains above and beyond other reductions already contained in the new budget.

Budget appropriations for 1996 were set at $1.3 billion, of which $1.29 billion would come from assessments on Member States. At the resolution's adoption, there was a balance of $19.4 million in the contingency fund (resolutions 50/205 A and B, 50/215 A-C, and 50/216 (VIII)).

Also for 1996-1997, the Assembly established a $100-million level for the Working Capital Fund. If that was not sufficient, the Secretary-General could use cash from special funds and accounts in his custody, it said (50/218).

(After exhausting the Working Capital Fund for 1995 in early August, the UN was forced to borrow from peace-keeping operations and the special account to finance the regular budget.)

After the budget's approval, several speakers voiced their satisfaction with the results. "Although this budget is not as lean as my Government originally proposed, it is perhaps the most austere ever adopted by the General Assembly", the United States representative said. The budget included a number of significant reform measures and marked "another in a series of significant steps towards a more effective, efficient and accountable United Nations", he declared, calling the Organization "unique and indispensable".

Canada, in welcoming the programme budget, suggested that the newly-formed efficiency board established by the Secretary-General be asked to help identify further savings. However, with outstanding dues totalling 35 per cent of the regular budget's assessment for 1995, it stressed that "the real constraint lies not in the established level of expenditures, but in the corresponding level of contributions when those expenditures are assessed".

Resolution 50/218 on the Working Capital Fund did not give the Secretary-General a "blank cheque to fund the deficits of major...