China, Brazil, India and other emerging powers agreed to major increases in their UN payments as the global body hammered out a new budget deal this week to avoid its own “fiscal cliff.”
The boom countries will pay more as economic crisis allows European nations, such as Britain, Germany and France, and Japan to cut their contributions.
While the sums involved are not huge by global standards — the revised UN budget for 2012-2013 is US$5.4 billion — diplomats said the new shareout is a snapshot of the world’s changing economic fortunes.
And the UN system has maintained some of its quirks with Greece, despite its economic slump, still paying more than India, which aspires to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
UN contributions are worked out according to a country’s share of global gross national income (GNI).
China will pay an extra 61 percent in UN fees, taking its share of the budget from 3.2 to 5.1 percent. It will overtake Canada and Italy to become the sixth-biggest UN contributor.
Brazil has agreed to an 82 percent hike in payments. It will pay 2.9 percent of the budget instead of 1.6 percent. India’s payments will increase 24 percent, taking its budget share from 0.5 to 0.66 percent. And Russia’s payments will go up by 52 percent.
The US remains the major UN financier, though its contributions are pegged at 22 percent while it accounts for 24.2 percent of world GNI.
Other major contributors will all see payments decrease. Japan, in second place, will see a 13.5 percent drop to 10.8 percent of the budget. It previously accounted for 12.5 percent of UN finances.
Germany’s share of the budget will fall from 8 to 7.1 percent, France from 6.1 to 5.6 percent and Britain from 6.6 to 5.18 percent.
A Western diplomat said the new payment breakdown reflects changes around the world, and that the contrast between Greece and India was “striking.”
Greece’s share of budget will decrease from 0.7 to 0.64 percent. However, its share of global GNI is 0.5 percent, while India, which pays about the same amount, accounts for 2.2 percent of world GNI.
A complicated series of rebates allows various countries to claim reductions in payments. China and the other emerging powers still pay less than their share of the world economy. The Europeans and Japan still pay more.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS