Funding Sources

IMO secures financial, human and logistic support for its technical assistance activities from a wide variety of sources, including:

IMO's Technical Cooperation (TC) Fund;
Multi-donor Trust Funds (MDTFs) are established to encourage contributions targeted on specific issues and are used to support specific technical cooperation programmes which address these issues;
Bi-lateral arrangements are concluded with governments and organizations to provide financial and in-kind support for specific programmes;
Other arrangements; and
One-off cash donations.

Technical Cooperation (TC) Fund

The TC Fund is the mechanism for the delivery of the Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme (ITCP). The resources of the TC Fund are used to assist developing countries in building their human and institutional capacities for the effective implementation of the global maritime standards adopted by the Organization.

Multi-donor Trust Funds (MDTFs)

There are seven MDTFs currently in operation which provide contributions to the ITCP. The seven MDTFs are as follows:

International Maritime Security Trust (IMST) Fund;
International Search and Rescue (SAR) Fund;
International Ship Recycling Trust (ISRT) Fund;
IMO Malacca and Singapore Straits Trust Fund;
IMO Djibouti Code of Conduct Trust Fund;
London Convention/Protocol (LC/LP) TC Trust Fund; and
the West and Central Africa (WCA) Maritime Security Trust Fund.

Bi-lateral arrangements: Financial and in-kind support

The Organization has been successful in developing partnerships with national and regional institutions which provide financial and in-kind support to facilitate the implementation of specific activities. As of March 2020, IMO had 80 partnership arrangements for its technical cooperation activities, 22 of which were financial arrangements signed with the Governments of Canada (x2), Egypt, Italy, Norway (x2), Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, the European Union (EU) (x2), the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Of the aforementioned 80partnership arrangements, 38 provided in-kind support in the form of cost-free or fee-free experts, hostship of technical assistance events or cash supplements not accounted through IMO.

Other arrangements

Four partnership arrangements establish the position of regional coordinators based in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Kenya for Africa and in the Philippines for East Asia, three relate to activity/response centres and 13 delegate technical cooperation implementation responsibilities to external partners.

Implementation of the Long-term Resource Mobilization Strategy

The Committee at its sixty-eighth session approved the Strategy for resource mobilization for IMO's technical cooperation activities as contained in the annex to document TC 68/4(a), and urged Member States to communicate actively with their development aid agencies to include IMO technical cooperation activities as a priority item in their national development plans.

Since the approval of the Strategy, efforts have been put into implementation of the Strategy to seek necessary resources for longer-term, larger sized and project-based resource mobilization activities while continuing with the current Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme (ITCP). Continued efforts were made to contact potential donors to establish partnerships, to generate funding and for the implementation of the long-term resource mobilization strategy, focusing on the establishment of the knowledge partnership mechanism.

Voluntary donation of interest earnings under the Contributions Incentive Scheme

The Assembly, at its twenty-eighth session, adopted resolution A.1066(28) on Reform of the Contributions Incentive Scheme (CIS), inviting Member States to consider voluntarily donating to the TC Fund part, and if possible, all of their interest earnings accumulated under the CIS during the period 2006 onwards.