Global Policy Forum

Assessments of Member States' Contribution to the UN Regular Budget

Picture Credit: caribjournal.com

The Administrative and Budgetary (Fifth) Committee of the UN General Assembly decides on the scale of assessments for contributions to the Regular Budget every third year. The scale of assessments reflects a country's capacity to pay (measured by factors such as a country's national income and size of population).

The Peacekeeping Budget assessments are based on the Regular Budget rates, but with discounts for poor countries. The five permanent members of the Security Council, who approve all peacekeeping operations, pay extra fees to compensate for those discounts. A "ceiling" rate sets the maximum amount of any member state's assessed share of the Regular and Peacekeeping Budgets. The US is the only member that is affected by those ceilings. Consequently the US pays less than its share of the world economy. (There is also a minimum rate of 0.001% to the Regular Budget for poor countries.)

In December 2000, the Fifth Committee voted to lower the ceiling rate from 25% to 22% for the Regular Budget. The US had promised to pay its longstanding debt to the UN in exchange for lower assessments.