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(a) To examine and report on the Budget submitted by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly : (■b) To advise the General Assembly concerning any administrative and budgetary matters referred to it : (c) To examine On behalf of the General' Assembly the administrative budgets of specialized agencies and proposals for financial arrangements with such agencies. (d) To consider and report to the General Assembly on the auditor's reports on the accounts of the United Nations and the specialized agencies. The task of the Contributions Committee is to prepare a detailed scale of the apportionment of expenditures for consideration at the September meeting of the Assembly. The principles on which the Committee is to act have been formulated thus : " The expenses of the United Nations should be apportioned broadly according to capacity to pay. It is, however, difficult to measure such capacity merely by statistical means, and impossible to arrive at any definite formula. Comparative estimates of national income would appear, prima facie, to be the fairest guide. The main factors which should be taken into account in order to prevent anomalous assessments include the following : (a) Comparative income per head of population : (b) Temporary dislocation of national economies arising out of the Second World War : (c) The ability of members to secure foreign currency. Two opposite tendencies should also be guarded against : some members may desire unduly to minimize their contributions, whereas others may desire to increase them unduly for reasons of prestige. If a ceiling is imposed on contributions, the ceiling should not be such as seriously to obscure the relation between a nation's contributions and its capacity to pay. The Committee should be given discretion to consider all data relevant to capacity to pay and all other pertinent factors in arriving at its recommendations. Once a scale has been fixed by the General Assembly it should not be subjected to a general revision for at least three years or unless it is clear that there have been substantial changes in relative capacities to pay." The Preparatory Commission proposed that these Committees should each consist of seven members. An amendment in' the Fifth Committee that the membership of the Advisory Committee should be increased to twelve was resisted by the New Zealand representative on the ground that a smaller body would be more efficient; it was hoped, also, that if the Committees were kept small it might be possible to include only two or three of the permanent members of the Council and thus establish a precedent whereby the five permanent members are not automatically made members of every Assembly Committee, irrespective of their particular aptitudes. The compromise number agreed for the Advisory Committee, the members of which are to be appointed at the September meeting, was nine. The membership of the Contributions Committee was fixed at ten and nationals of all the permanent members of the Council appointed.