Industrial Development Board, 21st session

Daily Highlights

23 June 1999

The twenty-first session of the Board was opened by the President of the nineteenth and twentieth sessions, Mr. F.Pittaluga Fonseca (Uruguay), who made a statement. The Board elected Mr. M. Reguieg (Algeria) as President of the twenty-first session. The Vice-Presidents are Mr. Fabianski (Poland), Mr. Nazahari (Islamic Republic of Iran) and Mr. Yakis (Turkey). The Rapporteur is Ms. Klein Ballesteros (Colombia).

In his opening address to the Board, its President, Mokhtar Reguieg, said that UNIDO had ultimately proved that it was able to play a significant role in attaining the goals set by Member States. Addressing the opening of the session, UNIDO Director-General Carlos Magariños announced that UNIDO was making its own contribution to the economic development of the world's poorest countries through an initial series of 25 country programmes for integrated technical services valued at US5 million. Fifteen of these were targeted at Africa, with a third of the 25 porgrammes designed for least developed countries. "Our Organization's reform process", said Mr. Magariños, "has become an example of success in the United Nations system as a whole. However, the capacity of our Organization to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century will depend to a large extent on availability of resources. UNIDO will be whatever Member States wish it to be."

The following items of the agenda were discussed: Annual Report of the Director-General for 1998 on the activities of the Organization; Report of the Programme and Budget Committee; programmatic review, including system-wide issues; and financing of the integrated technical cooperation programmes in developing countries. (Picture: Mr. Maruno, Mr. Magariños and Mr. Fonseca)

24 June 1999

The following items of the agenda were discussed: Annual Report of the Director-General for 1998 on the activities of the Organization; Report of the Programme and Budget Committee; programmatic review, including system-wide issues; financing of the integrated technical cooperation programmes in developing countries; field representation, performance indicators and evaluation; administrative matters; matters related to intergovernmental, non-governmental, governmental and other organizations; and preparations for the eight session of the General Conference. The Director-General replied to queries raised during consideration of certain items. (Picture: Welcoming Mr. Reguieg)

25 June 1999

Board Members gave the overwhelming support to an initial series of 24 country programmes of integrated technical developed by UNIDO. At the conclusion of the session, Director-General Carlos Magariños said that UNIDO had already received pledges amounting to million in voluntary contributions during the first half of 1999. "Hopefully, in the next few months, we can look forward to a consistent increase in this because of the excellence of our programmes and the relevance of their objectives". he said. Board Members stressed the importance of mobilizing extrabudgetary funding for the Organization's high priority projects while encouraging recipient countries themselves to participate in fund raising and sharing in the cost of UNIDO assistance.

The Board adopted a budget of 4 million for the biennium 200-2001, with which, Mr. Magariños said, "the Secretariat can work very well".