A/RES/53/214 Page 3 9. Also reiterates that a high vacancy rate hampers the delivery of mandated programmes and activities, and stresses that deliberate management decisions to keep a certain number of posts vacant makes the budget process less transparent and the management of staff resources more difficult; 10. Reaffirms that only the General Assembly has the authority to establish and abolish posts in the regular budget; 11. Requests the Secretary-General immediately to intensify recruitment efforts in order to reduce the number of vacancies, particularly in those areas where there are high vacancy rates; 12. Decides that the vacancy rate for posts in the Professional and higher categories should not be more than 5 per cent at the end of the biennium 1998–1999, and in this context requests the Secretary-General to take all the necessary steps to achieve this objective; 13. Requests the Secretary-General to enhance the Office of the President of the General Assembly by taking all the necessary steps to ensure the full implementation of paragraph 1B.10 of the report of the SecretaryGeneral entitled “United Nations reform: measures and proposals”,6 as adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 52/220, so as to provide transparency and accountability and thereby strengthen the ability of the President of the General Assembly effectively and efficiently to discharge the responsibilities of the Office as deemed appropriate; 14. Decides that the President of the General Assembly, consistent with the approved programme budget, should have full authority to use the funds provided in the budget for the Office, including hospitality and travel and any other requirements for the accomplishment of the official responsibilities; 15. Notes that paragraphs 74 to 80 of its resolution 52/220 defined the procedures to be followed in the proposed programme budget in dealing with activities related to country-specific special rapporteurs whose mandates had expired in 1997 and, as a consequence, there were no individual mandates for inclusion in the proposed programme budget for the biennium 1998–1999; 16. Reaffirms that, in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 79 of its resolution 52/220, no funds directly related to these non-mandated activities could be committed to them pending the consideration of the report on the relationship between the treatment of perennial activities and the use of the contingency fund, as requested in paragraph 78 of its resolution 52/220; 17. Regrets that the provisions of the decision contained in paragraph 79 of resolution 52/220 were not implemented, since the required report was not considered before 1998 activities related to country-specific special rapporteurs were implemented; 18. Requests the Secretary-General to improve the presentation of the budget performance reports by separately reflecting the impact of average vacancy rates on changes related to salaries and common staff costs for each budget section; 19. Also requests the Secretary-General to provide an explanation when average vacancy rates are higher than the level approved by the General Assembly; 20. Reiterates the need for the Secretary-General to ensure that resources are utilized strictly for the purposes approved by the General Assembly; 21. Regrets the tendency towards excessive use of consultants, in particular in areas where in-house expertise is available, and requests the Secretary-General to resort in future to the use of consultants only when 6 A/52/303. /...