Madam Chair,

I have the honor to speak on behalf of the G77 and China on the Regional Service Center in Entebbe during the second resumed part of the seventy- third session of the General Assembly.

At the outset, the Group would like to thank Mr. Chandramouli Ramanathan, Assistant Secretary General, Controller, as well as Mr. Cihan Terzi, Chair of the Advisory Committee, for introducing the respective reports of the Secretary-General and the ACABQ.

Madam Chair,

The Group welcomes the report of the Secretary General (A/73/764) and that of the Advisory Committee (A/73/755/Add.14) and recalls that the Regional Service Centre in Entebbe was established in July 2010, following the adoption by the General Assembly of its resolution 64/269. The Assembly, in paragraph 62 of its resolution 69/307, also decided to give the Centre operational and managerial independence.

As stated in the report of the Secretary-General (A/67/633), the RSCE was formed to create synergies and economies of scale to deliver better and timelier support and reduce or eliminate waste, duplication and bottlenecks in logistical, administrative and financial support services.

The RSCE has indeed lived up to these objectives, creating efficiencies and providing timely support through the provision of human resources, finance, travel, transportation and movement control services, personnel and cargo transport, and information and communications technology support services to its client missions.

We wish to commend the Secretary-General, and in particular the management of the Department of Operational support, for the efficiency gains amounting to five per cent reduction in operational costs, the upgrading of the Field Remote Infrastructure Monitoring System as a measure to reduce its environmental footprint, the expected efficiencies from the deployment of the Umoja travel solution and the expected reduction in ticket prices, the efficiency gains obtained through the implementation of the scalability model, as well as the cost savings obtained through leveraging the use of training services at the RSCE.

Madam Chair,

We have also noted that the East African corridor project closed on 8 November 2018 and achieved key benefits, including the development of a web-based inbound delivery-tracking tool and of an interactive regional surface network map, as well as cost and delivery time savings.

We look forward to the 2020-21 budget proposal, in which the future roles and responsibilities of the Strategic Air Operations Centre (SAOC), TMICC and the proposed Global Procurement Support Section (GPSS) will build on the experiences obtained during the implementation of the East African Corridor project.

The Group welcomes the expansion of the RSCE's full-service coverage to all special political missions based in Africa, including the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission (CNMC) and the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS) as well as the panel of Experts on Somalia.

In conclusion, Madam Chair, the Group wishes to assure you of its readiness to engage constructively on this agenda item.

I thank you.