UN System Procurement Statistics Report - 2000

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 cooperate 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 now 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. Based upon this situation, data on the personnel component will no longer be featured in this document.

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.

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 2000 report compiles information provided by 36 UN organizations and 121 UNDP Country Offices, the highest response rate the Annual Statistical Report to date. IAPSO relies entirely on the cooperation of the reporting entities and, in general, the responses have been encouraging and the quality of data has steadily improved from previous years. For the 2000 report a number of Agencies have contributed with data input which not been able to do so in previous years. The information from UNDP Country Offices was provided for projects under national execution (NEX). The 2000 report also features procurement data for projects under direct execution (DEX), these primarily being the UNDP Jerusalem PAPP office and the UNDP ENRP Unit.

Additionally the 2000 report features summary sheets for Member Countries of the Development Assistance Community (DAC). These sheets collate procurement data pertaining to the UN System of Organisation’s procurement activities in these countries. The information shown on these sheets includes the UN and UNDP procurement of goods & services, a breakdown of which UN Agencies procured from these countries during 2000, the types of commonly procured goods & services, as well as the member country’s contribution to UNDP’s regular resources.