Programme budget development
10 The programme budget is developed through a collaborative process across the Organization, beginning up to two years in advance of its implementation. The foundation of the programme budget development is the priority setting with the Member States. The prioritization of outcomes and outputs for WHO’s technical cooperation is led by countries and grounded in the principle that WHO should focus its efforts where it provides the greatest added value. The aim of priority setting is to identify, across all settings, the areas in which WHO's technical cooperation is most needed to advance national health agendas to achieve collectively agreed results at country level.
20 A preliminary draft proposed programme budget is normally presented to the regional committees approximately 18 months in advance of the period of implementation to seek Member States guidance. A revised draft proposed programme budget is presented to the Executive Board at the January session of the year before implementation. Considering comments at each stage, the revised draft is further revised to become the proposed programme budget, which is presented to the Health Assembly for approval at its annual session in May in the year prior to implementation of the budget.
30 The programme budget includes output/leading indicators that are designed to measure the result and added value of the Secretariat's efforts in achieving the specified outputs.
40 The programme budget development follows a bottom-up approach, focusing on country-level priorities to guide costing, planning, and resource allocation throughout the duration of a General Programme of Work (GPW). This process is based on country cooperation strategies, credible data, and may be adjusted at the onset of each biennium to reflect changing evidence and context. Country offices collaborate with governments and partners, using data to rank programme results. These country-level priorities are reviewed at the regional and global levels to inform investment decisions and ensure alignment across WHO.
50 In parallel, headquarters coordinates a consultative corporate framing for the biennium, developed with inputs from regional and country offices, that incorporates regional and global priorities and WHO’s global public-health goods (normative and convening functions), ensuring coherence across the Organization.
60 The programme budget costing process involves a combination of top-down decisions, decentralized bottom-up costings at the budget centre level, and coordination across the three levels of the Organization. Prioritization of WHO programmatic results links the programmatic and budgetary sides. The costing process begins after the Global Policy Group (GPG) sets the global budget for the next biennium and proposes to allocate it across the seven major offices. Each major office adapts global costing principles to its own needs.
Costing serves as a strategic discussion within budget centres on the key actions and resources needed to achieve goals for the next biennium. Given the 15-month gap between costing and implementation, the process focuses on high-level deliverables. Each budget centre must consider activities and workforce resources, ensuring alignment with previously set priorities. Once finalized, costing plans are reviewed by major offices and then at the global level. The aggregated budget is presented for Member States’ consideration through the Executive Board and the World Health Assembly for approval.
Programe budget approval
70 The World Health Assembly is presented with a budget appropriation resolution summarizing at high level the proposed programme budget document.
The programme budget is an integrated budget and represents the authorization from Member States for the levels to which the Secretariat is authorized to incur expenditures to deliver the approved results. As a result, it also sets out the level of resources which need to be mobilized to enable the delivery of these approved results.
The budget resolution resolves that the budget will be financed by net assessments of Member States (set at the time of approval) and from voluntary contributions.
80 Once approved by the Health Assembly, the programme budget is entered into the programme management system at a level of major Office and result, to enable the Director-General to control the budget, and to report to the Health Assembly on the implementation of the budget as presented.
