ICANN is willing to reduce its staff and cut expenses for its events and employees’ business travel due to the danger of budget deficit. ICANN CEO Goran Marby and chair Cherine Chalaby reported the news on their blogs almost simultaneously. Goran Marby pointed out that in the third quarter of this year ICANN’s revenue was $1 million less than anticipated.
The main sources of income for the corporation (64%) are transaction payments from domain names’ registration and other actions, explains Domain Incite. Therefore, the decrease of activity on the domain market in the last months has also led to the decrease in revenue. Up until the end of the current financial year (June 2018) ICANN plans to get $142.8 million in revenue; however, considering current tendencies Marby supposes that the result will be lower and the corporation won’t have any profit at all.
At the same time, Cherine Chalaby reported a deficit of ICANN’s reserve fund. This fund should have enough to support corporation’s activities in full for a year even in case all registries and registrars are not able to pay their fees. At the moment, there are about $60 million in the reserve fund and the corporation needs another $80 million. All of this pushes ICANN towards the necessity to cut expenses, in particular on events and employees’ business travel. Staffing cuts are also being considered. However, the corporation is not considering layoffs yet. It is willing to redistribute the workload and not fill existing and future vacancies.
