UN food agency seeks $42.6m for reforms
Friday, 21 November 2008
ROME, Nov 20 (AFP): The UN food agency said yesterday it would need 42.6 million dollars (33.6 million euros) to carry out reforms called for by an independent review.
About half the funds will be spent next year, focussing on measures to improve "systems, programme, culture and organisational restructuring," Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) budget director Manoj Juneja told the agency.
The FAO was expected to adopt the three-year plan at a governing conference this week, the Rome-based agency said in a statement.
Director-General Jacques Diouf told the conference the plan would entail a "sweeping overhaul" of the FAO's financial procedures, hierarchies and human resources management.
Forty of the agency's 120 director-level positions will be cut over the next three years with savings of 17.4 million dollars "to be reinvested in technical programmes," Juneja said.
Independent experts commissioned by the UN body recommended deep reforms in an August 2007 report.
"The challenge is to re-invent (the FAO) before it fades into insignificance," it said of an agency that has been in crisis since the 1980s.
The FAO groups 188 member states and employs more than 3,000 people.
About half the funds will be spent next year, focussing on measures to improve "systems, programme, culture and organisational restructuring," Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) budget director Manoj Juneja told the agency.
The FAO was expected to adopt the three-year plan at a governing conference this week, the Rome-based agency said in a statement.
Director-General Jacques Diouf told the conference the plan would entail a "sweeping overhaul" of the FAO's financial procedures, hierarchies and human resources management.
Forty of the agency's 120 director-level positions will be cut over the next three years with savings of 17.4 million dollars "to be reinvested in technical programmes," Juneja said.
Independent experts commissioned by the UN body recommended deep reforms in an August 2007 report.
"The challenge is to re-invent (the FAO) before it fades into insignificance," it said of an agency that has been in crisis since the 1980s.
The FAO groups 188 member states and employs more than 3,000 people.