SR Cover 2003 Front Page.p65 - United Nations Development ...

INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
The first annual statistical report on procurement by UN agencies in respect of operational activities, prepared
by the Inter-Agency Procurement Services Office (IAPSO) of the United Nations Development Programme,
was submitted to the 39th session of the General Assembly (Doc. A/39/417) in 1984. By resolution
39/220 the General Assembly established the need for recurrent reporting of such information on operational
activities and encouraged organizations of the UN system to co-operate with IAPSO in this important
exercise.
To obtain more complete reporting on operational activities, data on other components of technical cooperation,
such as project personnel, United Nations Volunteers and fellowships was included as from 1991.
Experience has shown that it has proven very difficult for a great number of agencies and UNDP field office
to provide data on personnel components in the required format. Several UN agencies encounter difficulties
in apportioning cost of the personnel components in view of insufficient links between administrative and
financial records. Resulting in less then representative data being available for presentation in the Annual
Statistical Report.
PREPARATIONS
Statistical data on procurement of goods and services and the personnel components for operational activities
are requested from 42 UN organizations as well as by UNDP’s network of Country Offices. To facilitate
collection and compilation of the large number of data, IAPSO provides pro-forma tables available from the
IAPSO website or on diskette, together with instructions for completing the reporting requirements.
The 2003 report compiles information provided by 30 UN organizations and 121 UNDP Country Offices.
IAPSO relies entirely on the co-operation of the reporting entities and, in general, the responses have been
encouraging and the quality of data has steadily improved from previous years. The information from UNDP
Country Offices was provided for projects under National Execution (NEX) and Direct Execution (DEX)
modalities.
Data collection from UN agencies involves processing of reports on procurement of goods and services
received from supply divisions and procurement units. Data on procurement is reported based on country of
procurement for goods and country of head office for services. Moreover, procurement orders and contracts
for services are reported on the basis of contract amount and not on expenditures incurred. It is, at the
present time, not feasible for most UN agencies to report data based on country of origin of goods nor on
actual expenditures.
Data on procurement of goods and services are based on reports from ECLAC, ESCAP, ESCWA, FAO,
IAEA, ICAO, IFAD, ILO, ITC, ITU, PAHO, UN/PD, UNCTAD, UNDP, UNDP/IAPSO,UNECE, UNESCO,
UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNIDO, UNOG, UNON, UNOPS, UNOV, UNRWA, UNV, WFP, WHO, WIPO and
WMO . No data were reported by CTBTO, ICTR, ICTY, IMO, UNECA, UNU, UPU, WTO.
Almost all UNDP country offices supplied data on the procurement of goods and services, except for the
following based in these countries; Botswana, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Samoa, Senegal, Seychelles, Sudan, Togo and Democratic Republic
of the Congo.
TRENDS for 2003
The overall procurement volume of UN Agencies during 2003 increased to USD 5.08 billion from
USD 4.5 billion in 2002, representing an increase of approx. 9.3%. This increase is attributable to most UN
agencies experiencing an increase in overall procurement volume. It is noteworthy that FAO, UNICEF and
WFP all had increases in procurement volume of 73%, 23% and 20% respectively.
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