Explainer: What is the Contribution of various Countries to the UN Budget?
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 24, 2019
The United Nations
operations are sustained from the contributions received from member countries.
Contributions from member countries are assessed every 3 years and are fixed
based on a variety of factors. Here is a detailed explainer with the numbers.
The United Nations (UN) is an international organization founded in 1945.  It iscurrently made up of 193 Member States.  The mission and work of theUnited Nations are guided by the purposes and principles contained in itsfounding Charter.
Article 17 of the U.N. Charter specifies that the U.N. General Assembly will determine the basisfor payment of the expenses of the organization. The expenses shall be borne bythe members as decided by the General Assembly.
What is the basis for
deciding the quantum of contribution of each member?
Each member state of the UN is obligated tocontribute to the UN. The contribution is calculated on the basis of scale ofassessments. The Committee on Contributions is entrusted with the job ofdeciding the quantum of contribution.
To determine the scale of assessments, theCommittee on Contributions uses estimates ofeach member state’s gross national product (GNP) and a number of adjustments,including for external debt and for low per capita incomes. The assessment thustakes into account the country’s share of the global Gross National productwith discounts given for low per-capita income and the country’s external debt.This is with respect to the regular budget of the UN. Similar assessments aredone for other organizations of the UN including the peacekeeping operations.For deciding contribution to the peace keeping operations, adjustments are madefor average per capita GNP compared to global average GNP.
The General Assembly has directed that the percentage shares range from a minimum of 0.001% to amaximum of 22%, and a maximum of 0.01% for those nations designated as “leastdeveloped countries.”
The scale of assessments is normallyreviewed after every three years.  The current time period of assessmentsis for the years 2019-2021.
Who contributes the
most to the regular UN budget?
As expected, United States of Americacontributes the highest with a share of22%. USA’s GNP in 2018 isapproximately 24% of the total GNP of all the member countries of the UN andthus its highest share of contribution is justified.
China contributes the second highest with12.005%, followed by Japan (8.564%), Germany (6.09%), United Kingdom of GreatBritain and North Ireland (4.567%) and France (4.427%) in the top five afterUSA. Italy has surpassed Brazil (2.948%) in the list to become the seventhlargest contributor (3.307%).
18 Countries contribute more than 1% eachto the UN regular budget. 175 countries contribute less than 0.1% eachincluding India’s neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Of these 175countries, 29 countries contribute only 0.001% each.
Out of the 193 countries part of the UN,the top 20 countries contribute 83.83% while the other 173 countries contribute16.16% only. The top 10 contributors account for 69.047% of the totalcontributions. The total regular UN budget for the year 2018-19 is $5.56 billion. A total of 112 memberstates have paid their regular budget assessments for 2019in full as of August 20, 2019. India paid $23.253 million in January within the 30 day due period.
How much does India
Contribute?
According to the assessment made for theyears 2019-21, India has to contribute 0.834% to the UN regular budget, up from 0.737% during the 2016-18 period.  India’s share in global GNP is now around 2.772%.This has resulted in India becoming the 21stlargest contributor ascompared to 24th position in the previous assessment cycle. There is an 8.8%increase in India’s contribution. Based on the assessment by the contributionscommittee, India’s  contribution tothe UN regular budget was fixed at 0.534% for 2009-12 and 0.666% for 2013-2015.
India’s contribution to the UNregular budget was $16.97 million in 2012-13, $17.19 million in 2013-14, $18.07million in 2014-15 and $18.58 million in 2017. India’s actual share is $25.5 milliondollars in 2019, but is given a credit of $2.3 million for the income taxexemption extended by India for the UN staff working in India. Hence the netshare of India’s contribution is $23.25 million. There is a sharp increase in2019 because of the increase in the share of India’s contribution for 2019-21cycle.
India also contributed to the other UNagencies like the UNDP, UNICEF, UNEP etc. India’s contribution to UNpeacekeeping operations was fixed at 0.1068% for the period 2009-12 and at0.1332% for the period 2013-15 and 0.1474% for the period 2016-18. For theperiod 2019-21, it has been fixed at0.1668%. The total peacekeeping budget of the UN for 2019-20 is $6.51 billion.
Among the BRICS nations, India’scontribution is more than only South Africa. Brazil,  Russia and China contribute more than India tothe UN budget.
India’s total contribution to the UN (including for all UN agencies) was Rs. 138 crore in 2013-14,Rs. 157 crore in 2014-15,  Rs 244 crore in 2015-16, Rs. 170.28 crore in 2016-17 and Rs. 239.47 croresin 2017-18. This has been illustratedin the  following graph. It is clearlyvisible that India’s highest contribution was in the financial year 2015-16followed by 2017-18.
UN faces shortage of
funds
Despite the contributions made by themember states for regular and peacekeeping budget, the UN faces shortage in funds. In 2018, inorder to meet the expenses, the organisation had to make use of the funds fromclosed peacekeeping operations.
Peacekeeping budgets are allocated to newmissions undertaken by UN and for expansion of existing missions. The funds ofone mission cannot be used for another even if it faces a deficit. For thepeacekeeping missions, there are countries that supply the required troops andpolice personnel for which the UN pays. As of March 2019, the pending paymentis $265 million and might increase to $588 million by June 2019. These numberswere mentioned in the report of the Secretary General on ‘Improving the financial situation of UN’. The pending payment to India is $38 million from the UN forpeacekeeping operations as of March 2019.