THE assembly of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) yesterday adopted a budget of U$10,509,700 to finance the work of the authority for 2003-2004.

The budget was endorsed by the ISA council on Tuesday and sent for approval following two days of deliberations.

Tuesday’s budget recommendation now goes to the ISA assembly for action later this week, before the current session closes at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston tomorrow.

The budget, providing for expenditures of US$5,221,900 in 2003 and US$5,287,800 in 2004, would pay for a secretariat with the current 37 posts, whose main tasks will be to continue monitoring activities by contractors exploring the deep seabed for polymetallic nodules, building a database on seabed minerals and promoting international co-operation in marine scientific research relating to the seabed.

The budget recommendation included other elements that had been proposed by the 15-member Finance Committee in its report presented to the ISA council Tuesday by its Italian chairman, Domenico da Empoli.

The council had recommended that the budget be adjusted to take account of any agreement reached between the authority and the Government of Jamaica regarding expenses for the use of the ISA headquarters office space in downtown Kingston.

The two sides have, for three years, been negotiating the portion that the authority should pay for maintenance costs, and Secretary-General Satya N Nandan informed the assembly on August 9 that considerable progress had recently been made in the talks.

The assembly was also asked to appeal to states in arrears to pay their contributions as soon as possible. Nandan has reported that 65 members and four former provisional members were in arrears for this and/or prior years.

The budget recommendation was accompanied by a compromise formula on the scale of assessments and the financing of developing country participation in the authority’s two subsidiary bodies. The compromise, worked out in informal negotiations between morning and afternoon meetings of the council, addresses the two issues on which opposing views were voiced when the council first took up these financial questions.

On assessments, the agreement retains the Finance Committee’s recommendation that the authority’s scale for assessing its members’ budget contributions be based on that used by the United Nations, including the recent lowering of the maximum rate from 25 to 22 per cent.

The compromise formula also calls for the creation of a voluntary trust fund to defray the travel and subsistence expenses of members from developing countries attending the annual meetings of the Finance Committee and the Legal and Technical Commission. At the same time, it calls for a review of ways to finance such participation, including the possibility of a provision in the ISA’s budget. Members of these two bodies serve as experts rather than government representatives.

At its meeting yesterday, the authority also elected 18 states to the council for a four-year term beginning next year, and approved official designs for the emblem and flag of the authority. All these actions were taken without objection.