The Executive Committee requested the Secretariat to work with the Implementing Agencies to develop a standard format for communicating progress and the reasons for delays. The Secretariat should prepare an overview document which would make it easier to see the work being done by all the Implementing Agencies on a country-by-country basis. Progress reports from the Implementing Agencies must be submitted at the proper time.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/7/30, para. 29).
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/9/20, para. 46).
The Twelfth Meeting of the Executive Committee agreed that there was need to monitor more closely the progress made by the Implementing Agencies, that greater uniformity and clarity in the reports should be promoted and that the information contained in them should reflect greater accountability to the Parties. In order to ensure that those goals were met, the Secretariat was to be given greater authority in instructing the agencies on the preparation of the reports.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/12/37, para. 52).
The Twelfth Meeting, of the Executive Committee adopted a uniform format for future financial reports, and agreed that the Sub-Committee would further review this format in the light of experience gained in its use. (UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/12/37 (paras. 38, 40, and Annex III).
(Supporting document: UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/12/6).
Subsequently, the Seventeenth Meeting of the Executive Committee requested the Secretariat, together with the Implementing Agencies, to adopt the mandatory format found in Annex V.4 for reporting progress and financial information to the Executive Committee. This uniform format had been accepted to provide for greater ease of cross-referencing; consistency and use of standard reporting periods; clarification of terms; greater ease of tracking the funds through the various stages of project implementation; information on percentage of funds disbursed; and reduced duplication between Implementing Agencies’ progress reports and financial reports.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/17/60, Decision 17/22 para. 34e).
The Eighteenth Meeting of the Executive Committee decided that the Secretariat and the Implementing Agencies should revise the format for progress and financial reporting, specifically to provide the first disbursement date for all projects approved after 1 January 1994, so that the format would provide the most comprehensive information, and to submit the revised format to the Nineteenth Meeting.
(UNEP/OzL/Pro.ExCom/18/75, Decision 18/16, para. 30).
Subsequently, the Nineteenth Meeting of the Executive Committee decided:
(a) to approve the revisions to the database format for progress and financial reporting, adopted in decision 17/22, as contained in Annex V.5 to the present report;
(b) to take note of the importance of ensuring that the information in the narrative of the report was fully consistent with that contained in the database submitted by the Implementing Agencies;
(c) that there would be two reports per year, with reporting periods concluding on 31 December for a report to be received by the Secretariat on 15 March, and 30 June for a report to be received by the Secretariat on 1 September, unless otherwise mutually agreed by the Secretariat and the Implementing Agency;
(d) to request the Implementing Agencies to include in the data submitted information on dates of approval and implementation of projects and disbursement of the funds, on a project-by-project basis, and to highlight in the narrative the reasons for any delays, since such delays could lock up Fund resources for significant periods, possibly several years;
(e) to request the Implementing Agencies as a matter of course to identify for each project whether or not an implementing agreement was already in place, so that the Executive Committee would be able to assess whether each project was likely to be implemented within a short span of time or to be significantly delayed; and
(f) to request the Implementing Agencies to provide the content of the database to the Executive Committee in diskette form, with a printout available on request.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/19/64, Decision 19/23, para. 43).
The Twenty-second Meeting of the Executive Committee decided:
(a) to request the Secretariat and the Implementing Agencies to include executive summaries in all future progress reports;
(b) to recall Decision 21/28 and to request the Implementing Agencies to include a "List of projects with no significant activity in the last two years" in all future progress reports, and to use the same format as used by the World Bank in its report (UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/22/62).
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/22/79/Rev.1, Decision 22/60, para. 80).