Mr. Chair,

1. I have the honor to deliver this statement on behalf of the Group of 77 and China on agenda items 131: Financial reports and Audited Financial Statements and Report of the Board of Auditors at the second part of the resumed seventy-eighth session of the Fifth Committee.

2. At the outset, the Group of 77 and China would like to thank Mr. Hu Xuewen, Director of External Audit (China) and Chair of the Audit Operations Committee, Board of Auditor for introducing the report of the Board of Auditors on United Nations peacekeeping operations for the 12-month period from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023. The Group also wishes to thank Mr. Chandru Ramanathan, Assistant Secretary-General, and Conroller, and Mr. Abdallah Bachar Bong, Chair of the Administrative and Budgetary Questions for introducing the respective related reports.

Mr. Chair,

3. The Group of 77 and China recognizes the important role the Board of Auditors plays in discharging external oversight of the Organization and express its appreciation of the Board's comprehensive reports. This role is crucial for the member states to oversee the Organization's financial matters in Peacekeeping Operations and to ensure efficient fulfillment of its mandates.

4. The Group commends the Board of Auditor's for focusing its effort on ensuring transparency and accountability of administrative and financial matters in peacekeeping operations and attaches great importance to findings in the current report.

5. The Group notes that all recommendations issued by the Board in the current report remained under implementation with 12 of them targeted for implementation before the end of 2024 and 14 before the end of 2025, and notes with serious concern that the implementation rate of the BoA's recommendations during past 3 years has decreased from 60% to 46%, and further dropped to 31%.

6. In this regard, the Group reiterates its request to the secretariat to enhance its efforts to implement all the endorsed recommendations of the Board in a timely manner, take effective measures and put in place robust accountability mechanisms for unjustified delays in the implementation of the outstanding recommendations.

Mr. Chair,

7. The safety and security of United Nations peacekeepers is of a serious concern to the Group. As highlighted in the report of the BOA, three peacekeepers died and one peacekeeper was injured in Bouar, Central African Republic, as a result of mine explosions. The delayed treatment leads to tragic loss of life of peacekeepers and such incident is not in line with the priority of "accountability to peacekeepers" of the Action for Peacekeeping Plus initiative. The group, as the major contributor to TCC/PCCs, urges the Secretary-General to take vigorous action to improve the effectiveness of the casualty evacuation mechanism.

8. The Group also notes with concern that the overall cash ration which measures the ability of an entity to cover its current liabilities with cash deteriorated from 0.48 to 0.3, and that the cash ratio of four missions was close to zero as of 30 June 2023. These missions have experienced cash difficulties due to a lack of payment of assessed contributions. In this regard, the Group reiterates its call to all Member States to pay their assessed contributions in full, on time and without conditions.

9. The Group will carefully review the reports and financial statements, to identify specific concerns and potential systemic issues raised by the Board in its report that need more attention and clarification from the Secretariat during the informal discussions, including but not limited to: management of the civilian components, cost recovery, scalability models, procurement of fuel, especially the huge losses over $20,000,000 due to fuel delivery problems in two large peacekeeping missions.

10. To conclude, Mr., Chair, I would like to assure you of the Group's readiness to engage constructively with all relevant stakeholders during the informal consultations to conclude this agenda item in a timely and constructive manner.

I thank you.