United Nations

The UNDP Budget Performance

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ November 25, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

Did you know that the UNDP, globally, had a budget of US$ 6 billion in 2005? For the Kenya country office, that translated into approximately $ 18 million. These are figures that came out of my first staff meeting at the UNDP, with the country desk officer at UNDP New York present.

I find this shocking for many reasons. First, this is very little money for a big country. The management budget for Kenya was about $2 million - and that is just for staff, not including the many interns, JPOs and JPCs that are funded externally and make up a majority of the staff. That is a lot of people for managing very little money.

More surprising was that the UNDP only spent about $2 billion of that amount. In Kenya we did better, spending just over $ 12 million.

Most shocking, however, was the emphasis on disbursements - on expenditures as a proportion of the budget. The point was clear to me - in an ideal world disbursements should be 100%. If our expenses fell below 50% of budget, that was a definite red flag.

There is some talk of systematic performance evaluations, but it appears disbursements, in the end, are all that count. But what exactly does disbursements have to do with the mission of the UNDP? Does it matter if we spend less, if we are able to save a life, educate a child, provide sustainable income to a family, help someone get out of crime?

I understand the emphasis. If the UNDP does not spend, next year donors will not give it more money. But, as my colleague pointed out, why is the UN chasing money if it cannot spend what it has? Regardless, this emphasis is perhaps distracting the UNDP from its job - its ‘core competence’. The UN has an incomprehensible set of incentives for its employees, but its measures for self-evaluation are more incomprehensible still.