Nov 9, 1985
59 MILLION SWISS FRANCS BUDGET FOR GATT IN 1986.
GENEVA, NOVEMBER 7 (IFDA)— The GATT Council Wednesday recommended to the annual session of the GATT Contracting Parties a budget for 1986 of 59.59 million Swiss Francs.-This was described to be a zero growth budget, after taking account of inflation.- The revised budget for l985 has been put at 57.54 million.- The GATT secretariat itself had sought a budget with 5.9 percent growth or 60.96 million, but the Budget Committee, chaired by Amb. Anthony Hill of Jamaica, pruned it down by 1.57 million.- According to participants, the report of the Budget Committee showed that the "trust fund" to finance the activities of the Leutweiler Group, which reported earlier this year on the trading system, was still in the red to the tune of l70.000 SFs, six months after the group of consultants wound up.- The work of the group had cost apparently a little over 295.000 Swiss Francs.- When set up by the GATT director-general, it had been announced that the activities of the group would be met out of extra-budgetary resources - voluntary contributions from various sources.- Normally, within the UN system in all such cases of financing from extra-budgetary resources, the programmes are pursued only when the funds are made available.- In this case, contributions were apparently coming in slow and small, and the trust fund was advanced monies from GATT’s general fund, to enable the consultants work to go forward.- One of the main recommendations of the group was for the launch of a new trade round, promoted by the U.S. since 1982 but opposed by the Third World countries.- The contributions from three or four identified private sources (in Japan and Western Europe) in 1984 was reportedly about 80.000, and since then about half that has been obtained.- When the Leutweiler Group's activities were wound up, the trust fund to finance their activities was in arrears to the GATT general fund, to the extent of 253.295 SFs.- The auditors would appear to have questioned the anomaly of advancing the monies to the trust fund, but the objection would appear to have been met by debiting the fund for the interest that would have been earned by the fund.- At the time of the GATT Council, there was a sum of 170.000 still left to be cleared up.-