The United Nations Office for Project Services, formerly a part of UNDP, was established, with the approval of the General Assembly, on 1 January 1995. Consistent with my overall plan for the restructuring of the Secretariat, I proposed to separate the Office for Project Services from UNDP with the objective of strengthening the operational activities of the United Nations system for development. Within this framework, the Office for Project Services is now the principal entity in the United Nations system furnishing project management, implementation and support services.
The Office for Project Services is headed by the Executive Director, Mr. Reinhart Helmke, who reports to me through the Management Coordination Committee, as well as to the Executive Board of UNDP and UNFPA.
The Management Coordination Committee, comprising the Administrator of UNDP as chairman, the Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, the Under-Secretary-General for Development Support and Management Services and the Executive Director of the Office, has met twice during the reporting period to deliberate on a number of important policy and coordination issues relating to Office operations.
The Committee reviewed the business plan of the Office, its new financial regulations, its relationship with UNDP and the Department for Development Support and Management Services, operational follow-up activities relating to the World Summit for Social Development, held in 1994, and a set of strategic policy guidelines defining the scope of activities of the Office, including client partnerships and principal areas of concentration. Four main areas of concentration were identified for activities of the Office: executing development projects, coordinating rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts, managing environmental programmes and administering development loans. The proposed new financial regulations for the Office were approved by the Executive Board at the beginning of 1995, affording a new framework from which businesslike management practices can be instituted.
The portfolio of projects of the Office has grown consistently over the past 20 years, reaching more than $1 billion in 1994. Delivery in 1994 stood at $403.1 million, up 5.3 per cent from 1993. The number of projects in the portfolio also increased to nearly 1,900, as compared with roughly 1,700 during the previous year. In 1994, activities where the country portfolio was in excess of $10 million were under way in more than 20 countries.
In addition to implementing projects on behalf of United Nations agencies and programmes, the Office also administers management service agreements (MSAs) on behalf of multilateral development banks, bilateral donors and recipient Governments. Against a portfolio budget of $639 million, services provided under MSA arrangements totalled $142 million in 1994. Expenditures incurred by the Office during that year under the Global Environment Facility and the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer amounted to more than $30 million.
In view of the experience it has acquired in managing post-conflict rehabilitation since the late 1980s, the demand for the services of the Office in designing and implementing comprehensive and integrated recovery programmes is increasing. The applicability of the lessons learned in the Horn of Africa, in Central America and in Asia are now being tested, for the first time, in eastern Europe (Ukraine) and in central Asia (Tajikistan).
In keeping with its field orientation and in order to render its services more efficient, the Office has decentralized a number of functions. In addition to the Management Support Unit established in Central America in 1993, the Office has set up a post in Kuala Lumpur, from which it manages programmes in South-East Asia.
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