CPM Financial Committee Meeting Held in Washington DC

CPM Financial Committee (FC) met on 19 June 2017 in Washington DC, USA. The meeting was chaired by Ms Marie-Claude FOREST, FC Chair (Canada), and opened by Mr. Jingyuan Xia, IPPC Secretary. The participants of the meeting included Ms Lois RANSOM (CPM Chair, Australia), Mr Lucien KOUAME KONAN (FC and Bureau member, Côte d Ivoire) and Mr Corné VAN ALPHEN (Bureau member, the Netherlands), as well as Mr Craig FEDCHOCK, Mr Marko BENOVIC and Mr Orlando SOSA from the IPPC Secretariat.

The main activities of this FC meeting were to review the actions points of the last FC meeting, and the progress of Resource Mobilization of the IPPC Secretariat for 2017; and to discuss the work plan and budget (WPB) of the IPPC secretariat for 2018 and 2019, sustainable funding initiative for the IPPC work programme, financial implications of CPM-12 decisions on the IPPC work plan and budget, and other financial issues related to functioning of the Convention.

It was decided to move the IPPC budgeting process one year ahead, which means that CPM-13 will be asked to adopt and note the WPB of the IPPC Secretariat not only for 2018, but also for 2019. It was also decided to improve the IPPC Secretariat WPB by prioritizing the activities within the work plan for 2018/19 so as to be more closely linked to the outcomes of the Convention.

A great progress was made on the Sustainable funding initiative for the IPPC work programme, including two categories: the Supplementary Contribution Systems based on the trade volume of the Contracting Parties, and the Pay as You Go for the emergent issues. FC decided to explore the possibility of CPM adopting legal clauses for the sustainable funding mechanism, instead of endorsing the use of FAO standard agreement. This is expected to considerably decrease the administrative costs of managing the sustainable funding mechanism.