The Executive Committee attaches great importance to an effective national strategy in the efforts of the Article 5 countries to comply with their obligations under the Montreal Protocol. National compliance strategies would enable the Executive Committee to target the Funds resources to national compliance needs. At the same time, the Committee is also cognizant that many of the existing country programmes which were prepared in the early days of the Multilateral Fund need to be updated to serve as national compliance strategies, especially in regard to the comprehensiveness and accuracy of ODS consumption/production data, and the enactment and implementation of regulatory control of ODS supply and demand by governments.
The country programme update should provide a strategy for achieving compliance by each Article 5 country concerned with, at a minimum, each of the reduction steps for each of the substances controlled by the Montreal Protocol. It could also be the basis for designing a performance-based sector-wide or substance-wide national phase-out agreement with the Executive Committee, either according to the phase-out schedule of the Montreal Protocol or an accelerated schedule decided upon by the government concerned. The term country programme update is used for its natural linkage to the existing country programmes, and in essence the update should constitute the national compliance strategy of the country in the compliance period. With this in mind, the update should:
· provide an action plan which delineates the activities and the time schedule needed to implement the strategy for achieving compliance, highlighting the inter-relations between intended policies and the specific activities;
In addition to the above, the other points set out in document UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/34/54 should be taken into account.
The Executive Committee recognizes that the responsibility to update the country programme should be that of the governments of the Article 5 countries, which should rally the support of key ministries and constituencies in the exercise, as well as relevant national stakeholders. While Implementing Agencies will continue to be requested by governments to provide assistance, it should be the governments who are clearly in charge of the process of developing the update.
Funding will be provided to countries which need to update their country programmes, however, such funding should be rationalized with funding provided for the preparation of refrigerant management plans (RMPs).
Country programme updates are not mandatory and nothing prevents the submission of projects under existing rules, however country programme updates should be considered in the light of the framework for strategic planning and are useful for planning purposes.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/35/67 paras. 121 to 125).
In view of the above considerations, the Executive Committee decided at its Thirty-fifth Meeting:
(a) to encourage Article 5 countries to take advantage of the opportunity of updating the country programmes to prepare the national strategy for complying with the Montreal Protocol obligations;
(b) to provide funding for national efforts in updating the country programme. Taking into consideration Decision 31/48 of the Executive Committee on funding of refrigerant management plans, funding of country programme update should be linked with the funding of RMPs. Specifically:
(i) in countries where the remaining controlled substance consumed is confined to CFC refrigeration servicing and the RMP has been funded, updating the country programme/RMP should be accomplished by the countries concerned when requesting the additional funding of 50 per cent of their original RMP funding level. Funding should be provided to enable countries to undertake this exercise;
(ii) in countries where the preparation of the RMP or a strategy for the refrigeration sector has been funded and is under way, supplementary funding for country programme update should cover CFC consumption in other sectors and controlled substances other than CFCs;
(iii) in countries where the RMP has yet to be prepared, funding of country programme update should be combined with the preparation of the RMP.
(c) to request that country programme updating be completed within 12 months, on average, from the time that funding is approved by the Executive Committee;
(d) to encourage Article 5 countries to take advantage of the opportunity of updating the country programme to develop performance-based sector-wide or substance-wide phase-out agreements;
(e) to adopt the Format for Country Programme Update included in Annex VIII.2 to the present report, which could be augmented by countries according to their strategic planning needs;
(f) to invite Implementing Agencies, in finalizing their 2002 business plans, to incorporate to the extent possible, requests for assistance for those Article 5 countries seeking to prepare country programme updates at this time.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/35/67, Decision 35/58, para. 126).
(Supporting document: UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/35/62).
The Thirty-fifth Meeting of the Executive Committee also decided that countries shall be provided with country programme update funding that is 75 per cent of the level originally provided to them to do country programmes. Low-volume consuming countries that have done RMPs will be given 50 per cent of the funding provided to develop their original RMP to do RMP updates, but will not be given funding to do country programme updates. New country programmes should, consistent with existing Executive Committee guidelines, continue to include RMPs.
(UNEP/OzL.Pro/ExCom/35/67, Decision 35/57, para. 112(b)).