Guwahati: The United Nations could run out of cash by the end of August despite a temporary funding relief approved by the General Assembly, a senior UN official has warned, citing delayed contributions from member states, including the organisation’s two largest contributors, the United States and China.
“We don’t have cash beyond August,” Assistant Secretary-General for Programme Planning, Finance and Budget Chandramouli Ramanathan said on Wednesday (local time), warning that the UN’s liquidity crisis could affect its operations.
Ramanathan said the UN would prioritise funding for the annual high-level General Assembly session in September by delaying other payments if necessary.
“We are going to make the high-level happen by scrounging around and stopping other payments,” he said.
The UN’s financial position beyond August will depend largely on the receipt of outstanding contributions, particularly from the United States and China.
According to UN officials, China, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the organisation’s regular budget, has yet to pay around 430 million dollars of its assessed contribution for the current year. The United States, responsible for about 22 per cent of the budget, owes roughly 2 billion dollars in accumulated arrears from previous years.
The UN’s regular budget for the current year stands at 3.45 billion dollars, down 7 per cent from last year. So far, 119 of the organisation’s 193 member states have paid their assessed contributions. India paid its contribution of about 35 million dollars, or 1.1 per cent of the budget, in February.
In an effort to ease the liquidity crisis, the UN General Assembly on Tuesday suspended a funding rule that required the organisation to return unspent appropriations to member states even when the funds had not been received because of unpaid contributions.
Welcoming the decision, Secretary-General António Guterres described the previous arrangement as a “Kafkaesque cycle”, saying the UN had been obliged to return money that “did not exist.”
Guterres said the organisation had been hit by a “double blow” of delayed contributions from member states and an obligation to refund unspent allocations that had never been received in the first place.
Ramanathan said the Assembly’s decision would provide temporary relief, but stressed that the UN’s financial stability would ultimately depend on member states paying their assessed contributions.