ROME, Nov 22: The UN food agency approved a $42.6 million plan on Saturday to carry out reforms, including streamlining top jobs, called for by an independent review, the agency said in a statement.

Under the plan $21.8 million will be spent next year on overhauling the financial procedures, hierarchies and human resources management within the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Forty of the FAO’s 120 director-level positions will be cut over the next three years with savings of $17.4 million “to be reinvested in technical programmes”, Director-General Jacques Diouf said.

He also appealed for an annual $30-billion fund to boost food production in developing countries by investing in infrastructure.

Independent experts commissioned by the UN body recommended deep reforms to the FAO, which has 188 member states and employs more than 3,000 people, in an August 2007 report.

“The challenge is to re-invent (the FAO) before it fades into insignificance,” it said of an agency that has been in crisis since the 1980s.

A special conference of delegates called to approve the plan concluded that it “provides a firm and realistic basis for FAO to significantly enhance its global relevance, efficiency and effectiveness in the service of all its members”.

In particular, it would better equip the agency “to deal with the crucial challenges it must address, including hunger and poverty reduction, food crises, climate change, bioenergy and the impact of the ongoing financial crisis on agriculture”.—AFP