UN Thanks India for paying regular dues within specified timeframe
The United Nation has expressed gratitude to India for paying its regular assessments, only the fourth nation to make contributions within the specified timeframe out of 193 world member body. On January 10, India has paid USD 23,396,496 as net assessment, becoming the fourth country to have paid its full regular budget assessments by 1st February 2020, within the due period of 30 days specified in the Financial Regulation.
“With a fourth country paying up today, we are going to repeat thanks to Armenia, Portugal and Ukraine, and freshly thank India, which paid up today,” Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman of UN Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters on Friday.
On this, Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN twetted, “Very few have already made it… Hope many, many more make it…”, regrading to the “UN 2020 Honor Roll” of nations having paid their regular dues in full.
The UN closed out 2019 with 146 member states having paid their dues in full for the 2019 budget, Dujarric said. 10 member states mainly Central African Republic, Comoros, Gambia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia, Tonga, Venezuela and Yemen were in arrears.
Last month UN General Assembly had adopted a budget of USD 3 billion for the United Nations to cover the year 2020, a hike of approx. USD 8million on what was requested by Secretary-General António Guterres. It also marked the first time since 1973 that the UN adopted an annual budget over a two-year one.
Last year also, India was among the handful of only 34 UN member states that had paid their dues in full on time to the world organization.
Last year in October, UN Secretary-General Guterres voiced deep concern over the “severe liquidity crisis” facing by the United Nations.
Writing to the member states about the worst cash crunch facing by the UN in nearly a decade, the UN Chief said the organization running out of liquidity reserves by the end of October 2019 and facing defaults on payments to staff and vendors.
Counter measures undertaken at the UN last year to meet the financial crisis included reductions in official travel, discontinuing events scheduled outside meeting hours and postponing spending on goods and services at headquarters duty stations.
The water fountain of secretariat was also shut down, air conditioning and heating reduced outside normal working hours of 8 AM and 6 PM on weekdays, and escalators to certain floors were closed.
