Working Party on the Strategic Framework and the Programme Budget, 73rd session (technical cooperation and evaluation)

I am pleased to see you all and welcome you back from the summer break. I hope you all had a good vacation and the time to rest after your hard work in Nairobi.

This session of the Working Party focuses on two areas: Technical Cooperation and Evaluations. And I am pleased to report to you on the work we have done in both fronts.

Let me start with technical cooperation activities.

In terms of financing, I would describe 2015 as a year of contrasts.

On the one hand, voluntary contributions --the most important source of funding for our technical cooperation-- fell to $34.7 million. This decline of 12% with respect to 2014 is due to decreased contributions from developed countries and the European Commission.

On the other hand, contributions from developing and transition countries reached a record high. They increased by 9.5%, with respect to 2014, to $17.6 million. For the first time in the past two decades, developing country contributions accounted for more than half of total contributions. These funds are used to fund activities in the donor country. And their increase reflects the trust countries deposit on our technical services.

Moreover, the demand for our technical assistance is far from decreasing.

Our preliminary data shows that, from 1st January 2013 to 30th April 2016, we received 707 formal requests for technical cooperation. Put it differently. Every working day, we receive at least one request for technical assistance.

But the paradox in 2015 is that while the demand for our technical cooperation goes up, the financial contributions go down. This widening the financing gap for technical cooperation, and hindering our ability to respond to developing countries.

Responding to the more than 700 requests would cost about $63.7 million. However, by the end of April 2016, only 58 per cent of requests had secure funds. 42 per cent of these requests remain unattended, and we need $40.3 million to respond to them.

And we expect that the demand for UNCTAD technical assistance will increase as countries continue to implement the 2030 Agenda. But if the current trend continues, the unmet demand will continue to widen and the financing gap to increase.

This is where we need your financial support. So that our response to demands for technical cooperation do not falter when countries need it the most.

In terms of allocation of resources, in 2015 total expenditures of our technical cooperation activities increased by 2% to reach $39.6 million. 57% of these expenditures were incurred by ASYCUDA and DMFAS -- our two leading technical assistance programmes.

Least Developed Countries continued to be our priority. In 2015, their share in UNCTAD total technical cooperation expenditures reached a record high of 48%, up from 40% in 2014.

But we all know that current funds are not enough to support LDCs in their achievement of the SDGs. Much more financial resources are needed. This is why, during UNCTAD14, we launch the UNCTAD Toolbox for LDCs. And we also published a list of LDC's requests for UNCTAD technical assistance. We hope that this list helps donor countries to identify specific projects and areas of interests and such interest can be translated in contributions to our LDC Trust Fund.

To mention a few things, in the past year:

We have created, and widely distributed, the UNCTAD toolbox. Now, donor and beneficiary countries have a menu of our entire technical cooperation products. The toolbox describes succinctly each product, the benefit a country can expect from it, and provides concrete examples of results by product.

We have widely disseminated how our assistance touches not only the economy, but on the life of people. Like the story of Thomas Olaya, the boy who grew up in northern Uganda knowing the fear and horrors of conflict. He created his own business and with the help of UNCTAD he made it grow. His life was transformed. And today, Thomas has 20 employees and a prosperous business. And for him, due to his history, he does not only provide employment. In his own words, "When you employ people, you create peace". These are the stories that now you can easily access in our website in the section "How we impact your life". We are piloting a database of formal requests for UNCTAD technical cooperation and proposing a new Funding Mechanism to bridge the funding gap. The goal is to help both donors and beneficiary countries to get a clearer picture of supply and demand and facilitate funds mobilization.

We have moved from decisions to actions to strengthen results-based management in technical cooperation. In July 2016, the minimum RBM requirements for new technical cooperation projects were implemented. With this we are ensuring that from the onset, projects are focused on results. This is a concrete step towards the establishment of an organization-wide RBM framework.

And we continue to have a leading role at the United Nations Inter-Agency Cluster on Trade and Productive Capacity. The Cluster has become an essential mechanism to ensure that trade and development is effectively addressed in the UN system-wide coherence reform. To enhance the role of Cluster under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UNCTAD, together with 14 other member agencies, are planning to establish this year a Multi-Donor Trust Fund.

Let me stop here, to later give the opportunity to our chief of our Technical Cooperation Service, Raul Javaloyes, to give you more details on this front.

Let me now briefly turn to our second area of focus: Evaluation.

Evaluation is fundamental on the journey to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In UNCTAD, we continue strengthening evaluations as it contributes to efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability. Our Evaluations and Monitoring Unit is always making efforts to be up to date, by engaging in policy revisions, or by participating in working group discussions and in the Annual General Meeting of the United Nations Evaluation Group.

The unit recently standardized its internal operation procedures in planning and managing evaluations. The standardization was based on the recently revised Norms and Standards of Evaluations endorsed at the United Nations Evaluation Group's Annual General Meeting.

Our goal is to ensure that continuous learning leads to improved programme performance. To this end, the Evaluation and Monitoring Unit, produces the annual synthesis report, including lessons learned, in order to contribute to knowledge management and dissemination at UNCTAD. This also helps programme managers to make informed decisions and better plan and implement programmes based on evidence generated by evaluations.

This session of the Working Party will consider evaluations of UNCTAD's programmes and projects that were completed between April 2015 and March 2016. The annual synthesis report, entitled "Evaluations of UNCTAD Activities", gives you an overview of findings from 6 programmes and projects and summarizes lessons learned.

The report stresses two main messages: 1) the need for programme managers to follow up on the recommendations of the evaluators by developing and implementing a systematic action plan. And 2) the need for programme managers to make good use of the lessons learned summarized in the annual synthesis report.

The report also highlights an important issue I would like to bring to your attention: the lack of funding for Evaluation activities.

Currently, the Evaluation and Monitoring Unit has two staff at the professional level funded by Regular budget. But this is not enough for all the activities an Evaluation team should undertake. In addition, the generous contribution of USD 1.1 million made by the Government of Norway during 2004-2014 is finished.

So, while we all agree about the importance of evaluations, this wide consensus has not been backed up by funds. And we hope to be able to count with your support on this in the near future.

I will stop here, as I know that tomorrow you will discuss more on Evaluations, when Mr. Guillermo Valles, Director of the Division on International Trade in Goods and Services and Commodities, presents to you the progress made in implementing the evaluation recommendations to UNCTAD's subporgramme 3.

The Secretariat looks forward to your guidance on the actions to be taken.

Thank you very much.