PH Advocates “Capacity to Pay” as Basis for Contribution to UN
Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the United Nations (UN) Ambassador Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. advocates for “capacity to pay” at the Formal Meeting of the Fifth Committee of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly on 10 October 2018. (New York PM photo)
NEW YORK 25 October 2018 — The principle of “capacity to pay” of member states is fundamental in determining their respective contributions to the United Nations.
This was the message of Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the UN Ambassador Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., during the second Formal Meeting of the UN Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary Aspects of the UN) of the 73rd Main Session of the UN General Assembly on 10 October 2018.
At the meeting, Ambassador Locsin delivered the Philippine position on the apportionment of UN expenses, also highlighting the country’s observation on the continued increase of contributions to the UN and peacekeeping operations by the developing countries and decrease of shares by the developed countries.
As such, he stressed that the current methodology for the preparation of these contributions should be guided by the principle of the “capacity to pay” of member states.
According to the Ambassador, the apportionment of expenses of the organization to be borne by members are reflected in the proposed report of the UN Committee of Contributions and is called the “scale of assessments.”
The scale of assessments is the methodology used to calculate the sharing of the UN’s expenses among its member states pursuant to Article 17 of the UN Charter. It is primarily guided by the principle that the expenses of the Organization should be apportioned broadly according to the capacity to pay of member states.
For this session, the Fifth Committee is expected to negotiate new scale of assessments in its regular and peacekeeping budgets for fiscal years 2020-2021 and 2019-2021, respectively.
The Philippines currently contributes 0.165 percent of the UN regular budget resources, and 0.0330 percent of UN peacekeeping resources. The new contribution rates proposed for the Philippines for the said terms are .205 percent of the regular budget, and .0410 percent of the UN peacekeeping operations.
Ambassador Locsin wanted clarity in the methodology process which has the greatest impact on the proposed change for the scale of assessments of the developing countries.
“We reaffirm the principle of ‘capacity to pay’ as fundamental in the apportionment of UN expenses, and we reject any change with a view to increasing the developing countries’ contributions,” the Ambassador said.
He said that the core elements for computing the scale such as Gross National Income, conversion rates, low per capita income adjustment, gradient, floor, ceiling for Least Developed Countries, and debt stock adjustment must be retained. END
For more information, visit www.newyorkpm.dfa.gov.ph/ www.un.int/philippines or https://www.facebook.com/PHMissionNY/