Interview: UN agency seeks further cooperation with China in promoting development

A senior official from a self-financing UN agency said that they want to have closer cooperation with governments at all levels in China and companies to provide project services in a bid to promote sustainable development by helping build schools and health clinics and fight diseases in the world.

Grete Faremo, executive director of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), said in a recent interview with Xinhua that the UN agency would like to further explore opportunities of cooperation with China.

"I think they can play a very important role," she said. "And in many ways, we are already working with many Chinese companies who are providing their goods and services into projects."

"And also now we work with Chinese local governments in promoting development in some provinces in China and we would like to also explore further opportunities of cooperation with China because we think that the country can play and does a major role in development," Faremo said.

"UNOPS vision is to advance sustainable implementation practices in development, humanitarian and peacebuilding contexts, always satisfying or surpassing partner expectations," she said.

"I also see that the country is playing an important role also to facilitate meetings between UN organizations," she said, referring to China. "It can be national or local authorities and companies so I am actually going to the Wuhan public procurement forum taking place now in November this year." Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province in central China.

Faremo said, "I think we need to work together -- a country's national authorities will, of course, always be responsible for what is happening in the country -- but also working with national society and private sector I think we jointly can promote development in many ways in a strong way."

"I think the role model is always important, and UNOPS tried to be that in providing tools, for instance procurement processes that are strong and transparent, and actually help a healthy competition so that the beneficiaries get the full value out of the money, so I think for the UNOPS to walk the talk is also by providing these processes and transparent ways of working, that is the case."

Faremo, a national of Norway, was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in May 2014 the head of UNOPS, which, based in Denmark's capital of Copenhagen, is an operational arm of the United Nations, dedicated to implementing projects for the UN system, international financial institutions, governments and other partners in the aid world.

Since her appointment last year, Faremo brings government as well as private sector experience to the UN agency, which helps partners deliver approximately 1 billion U.S. dollars worth of aid in development projects every year.

"UNOPS is what I call the workhorse in the UN," she said. "We are implementing projects in very many sectors, so we actually promote development in building schools, it could be building health clinics, it could be also providing, as we do, personnel to all the UN de-mining operations."

"We also work in procurement, we host the UN global marketplace, it's online based, so we invite a lot of companies to come and work together with us," she said. "And we are also working with a lot of UN agencies in, for instance, fighting global diseases like malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis, so I just give you these examples to show that we are working in many ways to promote development."

"This is an exciting venue about public procurement," she said. "Procurement is one of the mandated areas for UNOPS so we procure for more than 600, almost 700, million (U.S.) dollars per year and we are instrumental for a very important part of the procurement taking place within the UN system and a forum like this is of course providing insight into innovative technologies, into how the companies are working on sustainable development and UNOPS want to be a part of that."

"We invite all companies who think they have services and products to offer to register at this global marketplace, and they will be able to participate in tenders, and of course, compete with other companies in providing solutions and it is through a cooperation like this we can work together on innovative solutions that can promote sustainable development," she said. "UNOPS is unique in a sense that we are fully self-financed, so we are paid for the services we deliver and of course over the years that has made us pursue excellence in delivery and I am very proud to say that in our mandated areas I think we are delivering very solid quality in the work we do."

UNOPS is ready to carry out resolutions and decisions by the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly, she said.

"When policies have been decided, UNOPS is there to implement those policies, so when they global leaders have decided for instance on the upcoming Sustainable Development Goals, UNOPS can make them happen in local communities by for instance building new roads, by helping governments build transparent procurement processes, by providing health clinics, or it could be pharmaceuticals to fight diseases -- so again we are the workhorse of the UN," she said.

The Sustainable Development Goals, to be approved by world leaders later this month, will serve as a guide to the global development efforts for the next 15 years. It will replace the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight anti-poverty targets, by the end of this year.

Within the UN system, "UNOPS is probably the organization with work processes that are more like private sector than others," she said. "So we drive excellence in executions, we want to deliver results, and we want to be measured by what we do." Endit