UN System Procurement Statistics Report - 2006

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 UN organizations. 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.

ASR 2006

The 2006 edition of the Annual Statistical Report sees a number of changes to the report structure that are designed to make the report more succinct and improve its usability. The ASR continues to report on procurement under all sources of funding, while the reporting of procurement under UNDP funding has been discontinued.

The 2006 report compiles information provided by 29 UN organizations, UNDP now provides a corporate data submission encompassing the procurement of all country offices under the NEX and DEX modalities. Whereas in previous editions the ASR distinguished between UNDP procurement under NEX and DEX and Headquarters the new format reports on UNDP procurement as a whole, thus providing a comprehensive representation of the data. 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.

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, IFAD, ILO, ITC, PAHO, UN/PS, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNDP, UNDP/IAPSO,UNECA, UNECE, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNIDO, UNOG, UNON, UNOPS, UNOV, UNRWA, UNU, WFP(partial data), WHO, WIPO, WMO and WTO . No data were reported by CTBTO, ICAO, ICTR, ICTY, ITU, UPU.

The overall procurement volume of UN Agencies during 2006 increased to USD 9.4 billion from USD 8.3 billion in 2005, representing an increase of approx. 11.4%.

Procurement from Developing countries has increased by USD 1.5 billion in absolute terms and in percentage terms by 11.8 % from the previous year. This increase is continues the trend of recent years of a steadily increase procurement share from developing countries. This further evidenced by four developing countries being amongst the top ten countries to supply the UN system of organisations.