A Changing
Landscape:
Trends in official financial
flows and the aid architecture
November 2021
November 2021
For discussion at the ODI workshop on
November 4, 2021
World Bank Group
Development Finance
i
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES................................................................................... II
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ..........................................................................III
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................ IV
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................ V
I. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1
II. PUBLIC SECTOR FINANCING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ...........................5
III. TRENDS IN OFFICIAL FINANCIAL FLOWS ...........................................................9
III.A Distribution of Official Financial Flows ..............................................................9
III.A.1 Distribution of Official Flows by Country Income Group ....................................................10
III.A.2 Sectoral Distribution of Official Finance ...............................................................................12
III.A.3 Geographical Distribution of Official Finance ......................................................................16
III.B Overall Trends in Official Development Assistance .........................................18
III.B.1 Main Trends ...........................................................................................................................18
III.B.2 Country Programmable Aid ...................................................................................................20
III.B.3 Bilateral vs. Multilateral ODA...............................................................................................22
III.B.4 Official Flows to IDA-Eligible Countries..............................................................................24
IV. PROLIFERATION AND FRAGMENTATION .........................................................26
IV.A Proliferation of Official Financial Channels ......................................................26
IV.B Fragmentation of Official Finance .....................................................................29
V. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND AREAS FOR FURTHER ANALYSIS...............32
V.A Summary of Findings .........................................................................................32
V.B Areas for Further Analysis .................................................................................33
REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................35
ANNEX..............................................................................................................................36
ii
Figure 1: Official Financial Flows to Developing Countries.............................................. 2
Figure 2: Total External Financing to the Public Sector in Developing Countries ............ 5
Figure 3: Official Finance to Developing Countries........................................................... 6
Figure 4: Official Loan Commitments to Developing Countries ....................................... 7
Figure 5: BRICS Loan Commitments by Recipient Country ............................................. 8
Figure 6: Evolution of Official Financial Flows by Country Income Group ................... 11
Figure 7: Sectoral Distribution of Official Financial Flows ............................................. 12
Figure 8: Sectoral Distribution of Official Flows by Income Group ................................ 13
Figure 9: Sectoral Distribution by Type of Flows ............................................................ 14
Figure 10: Distribution of OFF Unallocated to Specific Recipient Countries .................. 16
Figure 11: Official Financial Flows by Regions ............................................................... 17
Figure 12: ODA Commitments and Disbursements since 2000 ....................................... 18
Figure 13: ODA Commitments by Sector ........................................................................ 19
Figure 14: Gross Official Development Assistance by Region ........................................ 20
Figure 15: Evolution of ODA by Type ............................................................................. 21
Figure 16: Distribution of Bilateral and Multilateral ODA by Type ................................ 22
Figure 17: Implementation Channels for Bilateral ODA .................................................. 23
Figure 18: ODA to and through Major International Organizations ................................ 24
Figure 19: Gross ODA Disbursements to IDA-eligible Countries by Type and Source .. 25
Figure 20: Proliferation of Official Financial Providers and Entities ............................... 27
Figure 21: Distribution of Official Finance by Implementation Channel ......................... 28
Figure 22: Number of Official Finance Activities by Sector ............................................ 29
Figure 23: Number and Size of Official Finance Activities by Aid Type ........................ 30
Table 1: Official Financial Flows to Developing Countries by Type of Flow ................. 10
Table 2: Official Financial Flows by Income Group ........................................................ 10
Table 3: Distribution of Official Flows by Country Income Group ................................. 11
Table 4: Growth in ODA categories between 2000 and 2019 .......................................... 21
Table 5: Official Finance Providers by Number of Entities ............................................. 27
Table 6: Number and Average Size of Donor Funded Activities ..................................... 31
iii
BRICS
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
CAGR
Compound Annual Growth Rate
CPA
Country Programmable Aid
CRS
Creditor Reporting System
DAC
Development Assistance Committee
DRS
Debtor Reporting System
DSA
Debt Sustainability Analysis
EBRD
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
FCS
Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations
FIF
Financial Intermediary Fund
IBRD
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
IDA
International Development Association
IDB
Inter-American Development Bank
IMF
International Monetary Fund
LDC
Least Developed Country
LIC
Low-Income Country
MDB
Multilateral Development Bank
MIC
Middle-Income Country
NGO
Non-Governmental Organization
ODA
Official Development Assistance
OFF
Official Financial Flows
OOF
Other Official Flows
OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
TA
Technical Assistance
TOSSD
Total Official Support for Sustainable Development
UN
United Nations
iv
This paper was prepared by Gaiv Tata (External Consultant, Principal Author), Stefano
Migliorisi (External Consultant), Guillaume Kroll (Strategy Officer, DFCII), Arvind Balaji
Rajasekaran (Research Analyst, DFCII), Deborah Oppong-Asumang (Consultant, DFCII),
and Natalia Antsilevich (Senior Operations Officer, DFCII). It benefited greatly from
consultations with the OECD (Olivier Cattaneo) both at concept stage and in the
interpretation of findings. Overall guidance was provided by Akihiko Nishio (Vice
President, DFI), Samuel Maimbo (Director, DFCII), Dirk Reinermann (Director, DFTPR),
Enrique Blanco Armas (Manager, DFCII), Clara de Sousa (former Manager, DFCII), and
Abha Prasad (Lead Economist, DFCII). Other helpful inputs were received from Haishan
Fu (Director, DECDG), Evis Rucaj (Senior Economist, DECES), Rubena Sukaj
(Economist, DECES), Ferdinand Vinuya (Senior Operations Officer, DFCII), Anton
Dobronogov (former Senior Economist, DFCII), Angelique DePlaa (Adviser, DFIVP),
Priya Basu (former Adviser, DFIVP), Irina Gabrial (Senior Operations Officer, DFIVP),
Brice Quesnel (Manager, DFTPR), Mei Leng Chang (Manager, Financial Management,
DFTPR), Ashish Makkar (Senior Finance Officer, DFTPR), Michelle Yan Li (Financial
Officer, DFTPR), Long Hanhua Wang (Junior Professional Officer, DFTPR), Patricia da
Camara (Senior External Affairs Officer, ECRMI), Ayhan Kose (Director, EPGDR), and
Ighodaro Omoigui (Senior Operations Officer, MDOPS). The support of Ad'm DiBiaso
(External Consultant) in cover design is gratefully acknowledged.
v
1. This report updates the World Bank’s analysis of the global aid architecture,
which had previously been provided in three reports between 2007 and 2011. It
broadens the focus from Official Development Assistance (ODA) to all public and private
sector financing to developing countries. It does so by complementing for the first time
data reported by official donors to the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC)
and Creditor Reporting System (CRS) with data reported by recipient governments to the
World Bank Debtor Reporting System (DRS). Despite some methodological limitations,
this approach helps to shed light on financial flows from the private sector as well as
sovereign donors which do not report consistently to the OECD DAC.
2. The main objective of the paper is to provide an impartial quantitative overview
of changes in the global aid architecture landscape, particularly over the last decade,
with a focus on changes in volumes of financing, sources of financing, and delivery
mechanisms. The paper covers financial flows up to the end of calendar year 2019, the
limit covered by most public databases at the time of publication unless otherwise
indicated. It can thus provide a useful baseline for future assessments of the impact of
COVID-19 on development finance. Another objective of this paper is to serve as
groundwork for more detailed and qualitative analysis of emerging issues in the global aid
architecture, such as the proliferation of donor entities and fragmentation of aid flows, the
rising volume of aid offered beyond the country level, and the concessionality of aid.
Follow-up papers on these topics would, wherever relevant, discuss policy implications for
the global aid community or the World Bank.
3. The main findings of the report can be summarized as follows:
• Financial flows to developing countries have grown steadily over the last
decade, largely thanks to private sector finance. During this period, private
finance grew by 10 percent a year while official (i.e., public) finance grew by 2
percent a year. While in 2010 public finance represented 64 percent of total financial
flows to developing countries, by 2019 public and private flows were almost equal.
• Among public lenders, BRICS countries provided significant volumes of loan
financing. Over the last ten years, the BRICS provided 22 percent of loan financing
globally. At the donor level, the World Bank Group and China were the two largest
individual sources of loan financing. While the World Bank Group also provides a
significant amount of grant financing, there is no data source which adequately
covers grants provided by BRICS countries.
• Middle-Income Countries (MICs) received almost half of total ODA
commitments since 2000 and 85 percent of Other Official Flows (OOF). Least
Developed and Low-Income Countries (LDCs/LICs) received 94 percent of their
financing as ODA. However, this amount only represented 30 percent of total ODA
commitments over the period.
vi
• The volume of funding which donors have not identified as allocated to specific
recipient countries almost quadrupled over the past two decades and now
constitutes more than a fifth of official finance to developing countries. The
rising share of resources not assigned to specific recipients indicates a growing focus
on global and regional public goods and on support for emergencies (humanitarian
aid and support to refugees in donor countries).
• Aid concessionality varied significantly across sectors, with grants deployed
mostly for social sectors and support for emergencies, and concessional and
non-concessional loans favored for infrastructure. More than two thirds of ODA
grant commitments in the past five years were made in the social sectors and in
support for emergencies. In contrast, 44 and 43 percent of ODA loans and OOF,
respectively, were used for infrastructure investments.
• There was a modest growth in the number of official finance providers since
2000, but a 2.5x growth in the number of entities providing official finance.
Between 2000 and 2019, the number of official finance providers around the world
grew from 47 to 70 while the number of entities providing official finance expanded
from 191 to 502. The rapid increase in the latter may be due partly to the lack of full
reporting at the beginning of the period.
• Development activities remain highly fragmented; the average size of official
finance activities has decreased by approximately one third in value in twenty
years. Fragmentation appears to be mostly concentrated in social sectors and in
bilateral activities. The impact on ODA grants, the dominant type of official flows,
was particularly strong. The average size of an ODA grant decreased from US$1.5
million in 2000 to US$0.8 million today.
4. Findings from this report would benefit from additional analysis in three key areas:
• Aid Effectiveness. Considering the limited systematic evidence regarding the
impact of proliferation and fragmentation on aid effectiveness and efficiency,
additional research could be undertaken to identify discernable patterns between
findings from aid quality surveys and the quantitative information on proliferation
and fragmentation made available in this report.
• Aid Beyond the Country Level. Given the growing amount of funding unallocated
to specific recipient countries, its three main components (i.e., emergencies at home
and abroad, regional programs, and global public goods) could be further analyzed.
• Evolution of Concessionality. A more detailed analysis of concessionality of
official flows could be useful from various perspectives, including the transition
from grant financing to concessional loan financing in selected LDCs/LICs, the
continued significant deployment of both grants and concessional loans in selected
MICs (particularly those with market access), and the link between changes in terms
of financial assistance from the World Bank and the terms offered by other financial
providers.
vii
Box 1: Key Data Sources and Terminology Used
Data Sources
The analysis in this paper utilizes two OECD databases which both contain data reported by donor
countries and multilateral agencies. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) database contains
aggregated data along three dimensions: donor; donor by recipient country; and donor by sector. The
Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database provides disaggregated transaction-by-transaction data.
In Section II of this paper, the World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System (DRS) database is also utilized
to complement the OECD datasets. DRS data includes official loans (i.e., bilateral and multilateral loan
commitments) as well as flows from private financiers, as reported by recipient countries themselves.
Terminology Used
Types of Donors:
• Bilateral donors include individual governments and their development agencies.
• Bilateral flows can either be directly distributed from donor countries to recipient countries, or to
multilateral organizations with donor-imposed restrictions on their use (i.e., earmarked for a
specific sector, theme, country, or region, also referred to as non-core or multi-bi flows).
• Multilateral donors include international institutions with governmental membership which
conduct all or a significant part of their activities in favor of development and aid recipient
countries. They include multilateral development banks (e.g., World Bank, regional development
banks), United Nations agencies, as well as multinational groupings (e.g., certain European Union
and Arab agencies).
• Contributions by bilateral donors to multilateral donors are considered multilateral flows if they
are pooled with other contributions and disbursed at the discretion of the agency (i.e., without any
use of restrictions or non-earmarked, also referred to as core flows).
Types of Flows:
• Official Financial Flows (OFF) consist of Official Development Assistance and Other Official
Flows.
• Official Development Assistance (ODA) consists of resource flows (grants, loans and equity) to
countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients (developing countries) and to
multilateral agencies which are: (a) undertaken by the official sector; (b) with promotion of
economic development and welfare as the main objective; and (c) at concessional financial terms.
Until 2018, loans were concessional if their Grant Element was at least 25 percent (calculated at a
10 percent discount rate of 10 percent). Since 2019, both grant element and discount rate vary
based on the Income Group of the recipient country.
i
In addition to financial flows, Technical Co-
operation is included in ODA. Equity provided by the official sector excludes Foreign Direct
Investment, which is included under private flows.
• Other Official Flows (OOF) consist of transactions by the official sector with countries on the
DAC List of ODA Recipients which do not meet the conditions for eligibility as ODA, either
because they are not primarily aimed at development, or because they have less than the required
grant element.
• Private Flows consist of flows at market terms financed out of external private sector resources
(i.e., changes in holdings of private long-term assets held by residents of the reporting country)
and private grants (i.e., grants by non-governmental organizations and other private bodies, net of
subsidies received from the official sector).
i
See http://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-
standards/modernisation-dac-statistical-system.htm
viii
Terminology Used (Continued)
Commitments vs. Disbursements:
• Commitments are firm obligations, expressed in writing and backed by the necessary funds,
undertaken by an official donor to provide specified assistance to a recipient country or a
multilateral organization. Bilateral commitments are recorded in the full amount of expected
transfer, irrespective of the time required for the completion of disbursements. Commitments to
multilateral organizations are reported as the sum of (i) any disbursements in the year reported on
which have not previously been notified as commitments and (ii) expected disbursements in the
following year.
• Disbursements correspond to the release of funds to or the purchase of goods or services for, a
recipient (i.e., the amount thus spent). Disbursements record the actual international transfer of
financial resources, or of goods or services valued at the cost to the donor. Disbursements may be
recorded gross (the total amount disbursed over a given accounting period) or net (the gross
amount less any repayments of loan principal or recoveries on grants received during the same
period). It can take several years to disburse a commitment.
Classifications:
• Country Income Groups: ODA eligible countries are classified into two groups i.e., Least
Developed Countries and Low-Income Countries (LDCs and LICs) and Middle-Income Countries
(MICs).
ii
• Country eligibility for IBRD and/or IDA: Economies are divided into IDA, IBRD, and Blend
countries based on the operational policies of the World Bank. International Development
Association (IDA) countries are those with low per capita incomes that lack the financial ability
to borrow from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Blend
countries are eligible for IDA loans but are also eligible for IBRD loans because they are deemed
to be financially creditworthy.
• Sector Classifications: Consists of social infrastructure and services, economic infrastructure and
services, production sectors, multi-sector and cross-cutting, commodity aid/general program
assistance, actions related to debt, humanitarian assistance, donor administrative costs, costs of
refugees in donor countries and unallocated. For purposes of analysis, a category entitled
‘emergencies at home and abroad’ was created combining humanitarian assistance and costs of
refugees in donor countries.
• Sector Allocable ODA: ODA flows aimed at fostering a particular sector in the recipient country.
Excludes contributions that are not allocable by sector (e.g., balance-of-payments support, actions
relating to debt, emergency assistance, administrative costs of donors, support to NGOs and
unallocated/unspecified ODA).
ii
https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-
standards/DAC_List_ODA_Recipients2018to2020_flows_En.pdf
1
1. This paper provides updated data and analysis on the structure and dynamics of
the global aid architecture. It reviews broad trends in overall financing for development and
within that, the role of Official Financial Flows (OFF) and more specifically, Official
Development Assistance (ODA). The paper analyzes the rising importance of non-
concessional financing, the continuing complexity of the global aid architecture, and other
phenomena with potential impact on aid effectiveness. The main objective of the paper is to
provide an impartial quantitative overview of changes in the aid architecture landscape,
particularly over the last decade (through the end of calendar year 2019), with a focus on
volumes of financing, sources of financing, and delivery mechanisms. Considering the period
covered, the paper provides a useful baseline for future assessments of the impact of COVID-
19 on development finance, which recent publications from the UN and the OECD have
already started to investigate.
1
Another objective of the paper is to provide the basis for more
detailed and qualitative analysis of emerging issues, such as aid concessionality, aid
proliferation and fragmentation, and aid beyond the country level. Follow-up papers on these
topics would, wherever relevant, discuss policy implications for the global aid community or
the World Bank.
2. The paper builds on prior aid architecture reports published by the World Bank.
The first Aid Architecture report
2
was prepared in the context of the IDA15 replenishment
negotiations, and later updated in May 2008
3
for the Third High Level Forum in Accra. The
two reports underscored the complexity of the global aid architecture, particularly the
proliferation of aid agencies on the supply side (with the average number of donors per
recipient country rising from about 12 in the 1960s to about 33 during the 2000s) and the
fragmentation of aid on the user side, both contributing to increased transaction costs at the
country level. The reports also discussed the prospects and challenges facing the donor
community in the perspective of ensuring the effectiveness of aid. A comprehensive update
4
was prepared in 2011 ahead of the Fourth High Level Forum in Busan; reporting on changes
in net financing flows to developing countries before and after the 2008 Global Financial
Crisis.
3. Aid architecture refers to the set of rules and institutions governing aid flows to
developing countries. Systematic measurement of aid has been undertaken over the last 60
years since the establishment of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 1961.
5
Since then, the OECD DAC
has served as the main forum for securing agreements on key definitions and changes thereto
(see Box 1). However, the global aid architecture has evolved without a pre-defined blueprint,
with most of today’s aid principles and institutions resulting from over half a century of debate
and joint decision-making. Broadly speaking, two aid “architectures” can be distinguished: the
1
See United Nations Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development, 2021 and OECD, 2021.
2
World Bank, 2007.
3
World Bank, 2008.
4
World Bank, 2011.
5
The committee of the OECD which deals with development co-operation matters. The DAC currently has
30 members. More info: https://www.oecd.org/dac/development-assistance-committee/.
2
“Cold War Architecture”, which lasted from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989; and the “Post Cold War Aid Architecture”, which started in 1990 and is still
evolving in important respects, such as through the global consensus around the Sustainable
Development Goals or through the increasing role of non-DAC donors.
6
4. This report seeks to go beyond Official Development Assistance (ODA) – the focus
of previous Aid Architecture reports – by adding to the analysis other flows that may not
meet ODA eligibility criteria. As a first step, Official Financial Flows (OFF), which include
both ODA and Other Official Flows (OOF) reported to the OECD DAC, were examined.
Overall, OFF increased substantially over the past 60 years, with an almost tenfold increase
between today and 1960. Within OFF, the share of non-ODA flows (i.e., OOF) varied
significantly over that period. From a mere 7 percent in 1960, it increased to an all-time high
of 60 percent in the beginning of the 1980s, before moderating to just above 30 percent in the
last few years (Figure 1). As expected, OOF constitute a higher portion of OFF in Middle-
Income Countries (MICs) and IBRD and IDA Blend countries than in Least Developed and
Low-Income Countries (LDCs/LICs) and IDA-only countries. In the first group, OOF now
constitutes approximately half of the official financing received, while it constitutes only 6 to
10 percent in the second. However, one notable limitation of this approach is that it only
captures transactions from donors who report to the OECD, thereby excluding flows from a
number of important bilateral providers, such as China or India, as well as from most private
financiers.
Figure 1: Official Financial Flows to Developing Countries
(Gross disbursements, US$ billions, 2019 prices)
6
See Annex 1 of the first Aid Architecture paper for a comprehensive review of the historical evolution of
the international aid architecture over the last half century. For more information on DAC membership, please
see: https://www.oecd.org/dac/development-assistance-committee/.
3
Source: OECD DAC Tables 2a and 2b
5. To draw a more comprehensive picture of all financial flows to developing
countries, this paper proposes to incorporate lending data from financial providers that
are not reporting consistently to the OECD DAC. For the first time, a dataset was
constructed by combining loan data reported by developing countries to the World Bank
Debtor Reporting System (DRS) – which includes official commitments from a broader set of
bilateral lenders as well as loans from private financiers – with ODA grant and equity
commitments data reported by official finance providers to the OECD Creditor Reporting
System (CRS).
6. Nonetheless, there remain limitations imposed by the underlying characteristics of
the datasets used, with implications for the analysis in this report and the comparison of
its findings with previous Aid Architecture papers. First, while the combination of the
OECD datasets with the World Bank DRS allows to supplement the analysis with information
on financial flows from sovereign donors not reporting consistently to DAC, it does not include
grants from these donors, for which no comprehensive data is available. Second, while the
constructed dataset does provide sufficiently robust data for country-level analysis, differences
in sector and other definitions imply that additional comparisons should be undertaken with
caution. Third, while OECD DAC data is available from 1960 onwards with accuracy in
headline trends, changing definitions over the years suggest that a shorter time period (i.e.,
2000-2019) would be more prudent for the analysis of sectoral trends. Fourth, trend analysis
for country income groups cannot easily be undertaken since the data is based on countries’
income status as of 2019, which may have changed from years of previous comparisons.
4
Finally, since convergence between aggregate data in the DAC database and the transaction-
by-transaction information in the CRS has improved more significantly in the past ten years,
in some cases, trend analysis may be more robust for the most recent decade (i.e., 2010-2019).
The paper notes these data limitations in each relevant section.
7. The paper is organized as follows. Section II looks at the overall financing of the public
sector in developing countries, including the rising importance of non-traditional development
partners. Section III focuses on official finance and analyzes key trends in its distribution by
geographic area, income group, and sector. Section IV examines the continuing complexity of
the global aid architecture through the prisms of proliferation and fragmentation. Finally,
Section V summarizes the main findings of the paper and identifies potential areas for future
research.
5
8. Over the last decade, consistent with concerted efforts by the development
community to increase resource mobilization by catalyzing private finance, flows
from private sources increased significantly while those from official sources grew
more slowly; by 2019, the two sources were almost equal in size. Between 2010-2019,
cumulative commitments amounted to US$5.3 trillion in real terms (i.e., at 2019 prices)
with 56 percent provided by official sources and 44 percent from private and non-official
sources (Figure 2).
7
During this period, the development community dedicated a particular
focus on leveraging public finance to catalyze additional resources, particularly from the
private sector.
8
Consistent with these efforts, in 2019, commitments from official sources
stood at US$315 billion (52 percent) as compared with commitments of US$288 billion
from private and non-official sources (48 percent).
Figure 2: Total External Financing to the Public Sector in Developing Countries
(Commitments, US$ billions, 2019 prices)
Source: Authors’ calculations based on World Bank DRS
and OECD CRS (for official grants and equity only)
9
7
In addition to private financial instutions, private and non-official sources also cover lending provided by
financial institutions with state ownership.
8
See, for example, the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda (United Nations, 2015) and the 2015 report “From
Billions to Trillions” prepared by six Multilateral Development Banks and the IMF (Development
Committee, 2015).
9
Data on official loans, sovereign bonds, financial institutions, and export/support credits is based on the
DRS database. Rescheduled commitments are not included in the calculations. Data for the following
64%
36%
48%
52%
6
9. Within official sources, the respective shares of loans and grants have remained
relatively stable over the past decade. The share of official loans was 57 percent in 2010
and fluctuated between 54 and 63 even since, to reach 52 percent in 2019 (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Official Finance to Developing Countries
(Commitments, US$ billions and percent of year total, 2019 prices)
Source: World Bank DRS for official loans and OECD CRS for official grants and equity.
10. In the context of mounting debt pressures in many developing countries,
10
discerning the full extent of official loan financing, its sources and destinations, is
particularly important. The rest of this section looks specifically at the volume of public
loans extended to developing countries over the past decade, leveraging the DRS dataset.
The comparison of donors based on their lending volume is not intended as a ranking of
their total support to developing countries or development efforts. If grants were taken into
account, the shares from multilateral institutions and from bilateral donors that provide
significant amounts of grant financing would be larger.
11
However, there is currently a lack
of comprehensive data available on grant financing, particularly from sovereign donors
countries has been estimated for missing years when no report have been received by the World Bank
(indicating the last year of data received): Chad (2015), Eritrea (2009), Somalia (1992), Syrian Arab Republic
(2010), and partially Tanzania (2015).
10
See for instance recent efforts to alleviate debt burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic through the Debt
Service Suspension Initiative (https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/debt/brief/covid-19-debt-service-
suspension-initiative).
11
Similarly, the analysis below in Section II may overestimate the role of donors that provide most of their
support through lending.
7
which do not consistently report to the OECD DAC.
12
Section III of this paper provides a
full overview of all types of flows (grants, concessional and non-concessional loans) to
developing countries for the subset of official donors that do report to DAC. In addition, a
significant share of bilateral donors’ support consists of core contributions to multilateral
organizations. Section III further examines the share of bilateral aid that is implemented by
multilateral organizations.
11. During 2010-2019, official loan commitments by multilateral and bilateral
agencies amounted to US$1.7 trillion. Of this, 57 percent was provided by multilaterals
and 43 percent by bilaterals. Over the ten-year period, the share of loans provided by
multilaterals compared to bilaterals remained relatively stable, but picked up in most recent
years, from 51 percent in 2016 to 71 percent in 2019. At the donor level, the World Bank
Group provided the highest volume of loan financing with a combined US$357 billion
globally over the past ten years, followed by China (US$244 billion), the Asian
Development Bank (US$131 billion), Japan (US$126 billion), and the International
Monetary Fund (US$120 billion) (Figure 4). In addition, the World Bank provided US$34
billion of grants during this time frame through IDA, the fund for the poorest countries,
basically to countries at high or moderate risk of debt distress.
Figure 4: Official Loan Commitments to Developing Countries
(Cumulative commitments 2010-2019, US$ billions at 2019 prices, top 20 providers)
Source: World Bank DRS
12. Over this period, more than half of bilateral loans to developing countries came
from the BRICS, especially from China and Russia and to a lesser extent from India
12
The World Bank DRS does not cover grant financing, since by definition no repayment is required from
recipients.
8
and Brazil.
13
Country coverage cut across regions, with largest recipients of BRICS loans
being Angola (US$38.7 billion), Pakistan (US$30.1 billion), Egypt (US$29 billion),
Bangladesh (US$27.1 billion), Belarus (US$25.7 billion), India itself (US$15.1 billion),
Ecuador (US$13.9 billion), Vietnam (US$12.1 billion), Sri Lanka (US$10.4 billion), and
Ethiopia (US$10.3 billion) (Figure 5). Intra-BRICS lending amounted to US$29 billion
(8% of total BRICS lending).
14
Largest destination sectors for BRICS loans were the
financial sector, energy production and transmission, and transport.
Figure 5: BRICS Loan Commitments by Recipient Country
(Cumulative loan commitments 2010-2019, US$ billions at 2019 prices, top 10 recipients labeled)
Source: World Bank Debtor Reporting System (DRS)
13. The combination of the DRS and CRS datasets provides a broad picture of
aggregate flows globally, but holds limitations in the level of analysis possible. As
previously noted, for the first time, this analysis combined data from the World Bank DRS
for official loans and private finance and from the OECD CRS for ODA grants and equity
commitments. Over the ten-year period analyzed, a larger number of countries and
providers of official loans reported to DRS than to the OECD, so that official loans reported
to DRS were 19 percent higher than those reported to CRS. While the combined dataset
provides a more accurate picture of aggregated financial flows to developing countries, it
cannot easily be utilized for a more granular analysis of underlying dimensions of interest,
such as donor agencies, transaction channels, or transaction purpose. Consequently,
Section II drew a number of key insights that could be extracted from the combined dataset
and from DRS, while Section III leverages the full depth of the CRS dataset to provide a
more exhaustive analysis along other categories of interest.
13
Recent reports have also identified the growing role of emerging providers. See for instance: OECD, 2020.
14
The World Bank Debtor Reporting System indicates that over the past ten years, India received US$15.1
billion in loans from Russia, Brazil received US$9.8 billion from China, and South Africa received US$4.1
billion from China.
9
14. This section examines the composition of official financial support to developing
countries using key variables such as country income group, sector, and geographic
location. Trends were analyzed for a slightly longer horizon than in Section II, covering
the 2000-2019 period, and were reviewed at three levels. First, the analysis reviewed all
Official Financial Flows (OFF), that is ODA and OOF combined. Second, the focus was
narrowed to ODA only for all developing countries. Finally, it was further narrowed to
ODA for IDA-eligible countries only. The analysis in this section was undertaken based
on data reported by official bilateral, multilateral, and other agencies to the OECD (i.e., to
the DAC and CRS databases).
15. Globally, OFF grew from US$111 billion a year in 2000 to pass the bar of
US$200 billion by 2008 and reach an all-time high of US$319 billion in 2019. Over that
period, OFF increased in real terms by 187 percent or a compound real growth rate of 5.7
percent per annum. OFF consist of four types of flows – ODA grants, ODA concessional
loans, Other Official Flows (i.e., non-concessional loans), and equity investments
16
–
which increased at differing rates since 2000.
16. Seventy percent of global OFF commitments over the 2000-2019 period were
concessional ODA (consisting of over 50 percent ODA grants, 19 percent ODA loans
and less than 1 percent equity investments) and 30 percent were OOF (Table 1).
Growth patterns varied among the different types of flows. ODA grants grew most rapidly
until 2006, before continuing to grow but at a slower pace ever since. ODA loans remained
relatively stable until 2006, before starting to pick up until 2017, and have now decreased
two years in a row. OOF (i.e., non-concessional loans) also remained stable until 2006
before growing rapidly ever since, at a faster pace than ODA grants and ODA loans. While
OOF constituted 27 percent of OFF in 2000, this share increased to 36 percent today.
17
15
Private philanthropy is excluded from this analysis since data is only available as summary figures (in
DAC tables) and flows to recipient governments could not be separately identified. In 2019, $8.6 billion were
reported as financing flows from private philanthropy.
16
Equity investments for the official sector do not include private-to-private equity flows (i.e., Foreign Direct
Investments).
17
These findings are consistent with recent reports, such as OECD, 2020, which provides additional insights
on the rise of non-concessional finance.
10
Table 1: Official Financial Flows to Developing Countries by Type of Flow
(Cumulative commitments 2000-2019, US$ billions at 2019 prices)
Total
US$ bn
%
ODA Grants
2,182
50
ODA Loans
818
19
Equity
25
1
Subtotal ODA
3,024
70
OOF
1,291
30
Total
4,316
100
Source: CRS
17. Over the period 2000-2019, the composition of concessional vs. non-concessional
resources and the distribution of concessional resources varied across country income
groups, i.e., Least Developed Countries and Low-Income Countries (LDCs/LICs) and
Middle-Income Countries (MICs).
18
18. LDCs/LICs received 94 percent of their financing as concessional resources,
whereas MICs received 56 percent as concessional resources. Specifically, LDCs/LICs
received US$661 billion (69 percent of OFF) of financial resources as ODA grants,
US$241 billion (25 percent) as ODA loans and US$54 billion (6 percent) as OOF, while
MICs received US$831 billion (33 percent) as ODA grants, US$556 billion (22 percent)
of ODA loans and US$1.1 trillion (44 percent) as OOF. Flows unallocated to specific
recipient countries largely took the form of ODA grants (Table 2).
Table 2: Official Financial Flows by Income Group
(Cumulative commitments 2000-2019, US$ billions at 2019 prices and
% of total OFF per country income group)
LDCs/ LICs
MICs
Unallocated
US$ billion
%
US$ billion
billion
%
US$ billion
%
ODA Grants
661
69
831
33
689
79
ODA Loans
241
25
556
22
20
2
Equity
2
0
9
0
14
2
Subtotal ODA
905
94
1,396
56
723
83
OOF
54
6
1,093
44
144
17
Total
959
100
2,490
100
867
100
19. Over the period, official financing flows increased across all income groups. For
LDCs/LICs, grants increased from US$16 billion a year in 2000 to US$46 billion in 2019,
18
Current (i.e., 2019) Country Income Groups classification used for reporting historical trends. Country
Income Group data in this report should not be compared with similar data presented in previous editions of
this paper due to changing country composition of each group.
Source: CRS
11
but this increase was proportionally lower than that of ODA loans and OOF, which now
constitute 23 and 12 percent of OFF to LDCs/LICS, respectively (with grants still
accounting for the remaining 65 percent). For MICs, OOF (i.e., non-concessional loans)
increased from US$26 billion in 2000 to US$93 billion in 2019, and grew proportionally
faster than other type of flows (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Evolution of Official Financial Flows by Country Income Group
(Commitments 2000 to 2019, US$ billions, 2019 prices)
20. Looking at the distribution by type of flows, almost half of ODA commitments
over the past two decades went to MICs, reflecting their large population size, while
LDCs/LICs received one third of ODA. Specifically, LDCs and LICs received 30 percent
of all ODA grants, 30 percent of all ODA loans and 4 percent of OOF commitments. MICs
received 38 percent of all ODA grants, 68 percent of all ODA loans and 85 percent of all
OOF commitments. Interestingly, 32 percent of grants over the past decade were
unallocated to specific recipient countries (Table 3).
Table 3: Distribution of Official Flows by Country Income Group
(Cumulative commitments 2000-2019, percentage of flow type total)
LDCs/ LICs
MICs
Unallocated
Total
ODA Grants
30
38
32
100
ODA Loans
30
68
2
100
Equity
8
36
57
100
Subtotal ODA
30
46
24
100
OOF
4
85
11
100
Total
22
58
20
100
Source: CRS
Source: CRS
12
21. The significant real growth (188 percent) in OFF since 2000 resulted in volume
increases for all sectors (Figure 7).
19
For example, social sectors grew from US$40
billion to US$101 billion a year, infrastructure grew from US$23 billion to US$86 billion,
emergencies at home and abroad grew from US$6 billion to US$44 billion and production
grew from US$10 billion to US$34 billion. Overall, commitments to social sectors
constituted a third (34 percent) of all OFF commitments and commitments to infrastructure
represented a quarter (26 percent). Eleven percent went to budget support, 10 percent to
production, 9 percent to emergencies at home and abroad, 7 percent to other categories,
and 4 percent to debt relief.
Figure 7: Sectoral Distribution of Official Financial Flows
(Commitments, US$ millions, 2019 prices)
22. Three sectors grew proportionally faster than others over that period:
emergencies at home and abroad (from 5 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2019),
infrastructure (from 21 to 27 percent) and to a lesser extent, production (from 9 to 11
percent). In contrast, three sectors experienced declining shares: budget support (from 15
to 9 percent), social sectors (from 36 percent to 32 percent), and debt relief (from 4 to less
than one percent). Emergencies include expenditures undertaken for humanitarian aid in
developing countries and the cost of refugees incurred in donor countries. Both sub-
19
Sector definitions in this report draw largely on DAC sector classifications but summarizes them further
in some cases. Please see Sector Classifications in the Annex for details.
Source: CRS
13
categories increased over the period, from US$5 billion to US$34 billion for humanitarian
aid abroad and from US$1 billion to US$10 billion for refugees at home. Growth rates
were relatively similar from 2000 to 2009, but commitments to refugees in donor countries
increased proportionally faster over the last decade, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate
(CAGR) of 14 percent versus 10 percent for humanitarian aid.
23. Changes in OFF sectoral distribution differed across country income groups.
Specifically, commitments to social sectors increased proportionally faster than
commitments to other sectors in LDCs/LICs (from 36 to 38 percent of OFF) but decreased
proportionally to other sectors in MICs (from 40 to 31 percent). In contrast, commitments
to infrastructure, production, and emergencies at home and abroad all proportionally
increased across all country income groups, while commitments to budget support
decreased (Figure 8).
Figure 8: Sectoral Distribution of Official Flows by Income Group
(Commitments 2000 vs. 2019, % of year total)
Source: CRS
24. Sectoral distribution of OFF differed significantly between grants and loans,
but was similar for concessional and non-concessional loans. ODA grants commitments
focused mostly on social sectors over the past 20 years, and more recently also on
emergencies at home and abroad. Together, these two sectors received two thirds of ODA
grants commitments over the past five years. Only 13 percent of ODA grants went to the
infrastructure and production sectors. In contrast, ODA loans, OOF, and equity investments
focused primarily on infrastructure, the share of which increased for each type of flow
during the period analyzed, from 33 to 47 percent for ODA loans, from 33 to 45 percent
for OOF, and from 51 to 59 percent for equity. Significant shares of ODA loans and OOF
also initially went to social sectors, but these decreased proportionally over time while
14
shares for loans for budget support and for production increased (Figure 9).
20
Many MDBs
choose to allocate ODA grants primarily based on recipient countries’ debt outlook instead
of the sector where the commitment is made, although data suggests that the allocation of
grants to countries facing high risk of debt distress has decreased in recent years
proportionally to other types of flows (Box 2).
Figure 9: Sectoral Distribution by Type of Flows
(% of five-year average)
Source: CRS
20
In 2019, the OECD introduced the concept of “transition finance”, which examines the evolution of sources
of financing as countries progress through different development stages (Piemonte et al., 2019). The analysis
of transition finance provides a dynamic perspective to the sectoral distribution of OFF and suggests that the
evolution of types of flows along development stages varies across sectors, with longer dependence on ODA,
especially grants, for certain sectors like health.
15
25. The volume of OFF which donors have not identified as allocated to specific
recipient countries almost quadrupled over the past 20 years, mostly due to an
increase in commitments for emergencies and for global and regional public goods.
OFF not assigned for specific recipients increased from US$18 billion a year in 2000 to
US$70 billion a year in 2019, and now represent 22 percent of total OFF to developing
countries. There appears to be two main reasons for the observed growth in country
unallocated OFF:
• The significant increase of commitments for emergencies at home and abroad (i.e.,
i.e., humanitarian aid and support to refugees in donor countries, which by definition
cannot be easily geographically predicted), which grew significantly over the past
two decades, from US$2.2 billion in 2000 (13 percent of country unallocated OFF)
to almost US$15 billion today (22 percent) (Figure 10 – top graph).
• The increase in commitments “beyond the country level”, e.g., to regional programs,
which grew most significantly over the past five years, from US$15 billion in 2014
(31 percent of country unallocated OFF) to almost US$28 billion in 2019 (40
percent) (Figure 10 – bottom graph).
Box 2: OFF to Countries with Debt Vulnerabilities
Through the joint World Bank-IMF Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries, the two
institutions produce regular Debt Sustainability Analyses (DSA), whereby countries are classified
according to their risk of external debt distress. Over the last decade, the number of countries assessed
to be at high risk of external debt distress or in debt distress decreased from 23 in 2010 to 16 in 2014,
before increasing progressively up to 33 in 2019.
i
During this period, the share of ODA grants in official
flows to countries facing high debt vulnerabilities declined from 93 in 2000 to 62 percent in 2018, while
the share of ODA loans and other OOF rose from 7 to 38 percent. A reversal in this trend was observed
in 2019 with an increase in the proportion of grants to 76 percent.
These observations contrast with the
approach adopted by most MDBs which allocate grants primarily based on recipient countries’ debt
outlook, suggesting that many other donors may not have aligned their terms of financing solely based
on these considerations, or are doing so only with a lag.
Source: CRS and Historical List of Risk of External Debt Distress
i
The graph reflects the changing composition of the group along the years.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Composition of OFF to countries assessed to be at high risk of
external debt distress or in debt distress
(% of year total)
ODA Grants ODA Loans OOF
16
Many activities with a global public good or regional approach, including those from
MDB regional windows and Financial Intermediary Funds (FIFs),
21
would ultimately be
allocated to individual countries. Despite this, OFF unallocated to specific countries has
been on the rise. This may suggest a growing trend of a larger role being given to regional
organizations to act on behalf of groups of countries, although additional analysis would
be useful to better understand this phenomenon.
Figure 10: Distribution of OFF Unallocated to Specific Recipient Countries
(Commitments, US$ millions, 2019 prices)
Source: OECD CRS
26. The growth in OFF from US$111 billion in 2000 to US319 billion in 2019
benefited all regions. In 2019, Sub-Saharan Africa received US$73 billion (up from
US$26 billion in 2000), South and Central Asia received US$53 billion (up from US$13
billion), Middle East and North Africa received US$50 billion (up from US$11 billion),
Central and South America received US$45 billion (up from US$23 billion), East Asia and
Pacific received US$37 billion (up from US$19 billion) and Europe received US$19 billion
(up from US$9 billion). Over the 2000-2019 period, Sub-Saharan Africa received 23
percent of OFF commitments followed by South and Central Asia (16 percent), Central
and South America (15 percent), East Asia and the Pacific and Middle East and North
21
FIFs are a special type of trust fund that provide large-scale funding for broad, coordinated interventions,
usually focused on themes, and typically aimed at achieving global public goods.
17
Africa (13 percent) and Europe (7 percent). Thirteen percent of commitments were not
regionally allocated (Figure 11). OFF to fragile and conflict-affected states, which are
spread across all regions of the world, is analyzed in Box 3.
Figure 11: Official Financial Flows by Regions
(Commitments, US$ millions, 2019 prices)
Box 3: OFF to Fragile Countries
There exist multiple lists of fragile countries, including the OECD’s States of Fragility and the Fund For
Peace’s Fragile States Index. Since 2006, the World Bank Group has been releasing a list of fragile and
conflict-affected situations (FCS), which include countries affected by violent conflict (based on the
number of deaths relative to the population) and countries with high levels of institutional and social
fragility (based on indicators measuring the quality of policies and institutions).
i
Over the period
analyzed, the number of FCS countries on the WBG list remained relatively stable, from 35 in 2006 to
33 in 2012 and 36 in 2019. Official financial flows to these countries have increased globally,
particularly in most recent years, reaching US$106 per capita in 2019.
ii
This evolution may suggest a
growing focus from official donors on the issues of fragility, conflict, and violence which affect
development outcomes.
Sources: CRS for commitment data, World Development Indicators for population data,
and WB List of Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations
i
See: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/brief/harmonized-list-of-fragile-situations
ii Per capita amounts used due to evolving nature of the list and its changing composition every year.
$0
$20
$40
$60
$80
$100
$120
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
OFF Commitments per capita to FCS
(US$ at 2019 prices)
OOF p.c.
ODA Loans p.c.
ODA Grants p.c.
Source: CRS
18
27. After a protracted decline during the 1990s, ODA has been growing steadily
since 2000. ODA commitments increased from US$80 billion in 2000 to US$204 billion
in 2019, while disbursements increased from US$32 billion to US$192 billion. This
positive trend is illustrated in Figure 12 and holds true irrespective of whether aggregate or
detailed ODA commitments or disbursements are analyzed.
22
Figure 12: ODA Commitments and Disbursements since 2000
(US$ millions, 2019 prices)
28. This sub-section primarily utilizes data on ODA grants and loan commitments, but
also leverages disbursement data where trends are better reflected (or only captured) this
way. To allow for comparability of data across the extended time period, the remainder of
the analysis is presented in constant 2019 prices.
29. Country income group. As previously noted, 30 percent of ODA commitments
between 2000 and 2019 were provided to LDCs/LICs, 46 percent to MICs, and 24 percent
were unallocated to specific recipient countries.
30. Sectoral distribution. Between 2000 and 2019, sector allocable ODA
23
increased
substantially from US$76 billion to US$208 billion. In 2019, social sectors received US$78
22
At the start of the period, there were significant differences between aggregate reporting (from DAC tables)
and detailed reporting (from CRS), particularly for gross disbursements. By the end of the period, divergence
between the two had reduced to less than 4 percent.
23
DAC defines “sector allocable ODA” as all ODA flows aimed at fostering a particular sector in the
recipient country, and thus excludes all the contributions that are not susceptible to allocation by sector (e.g.,
balance-of-payments support, actions related to debt, emergency assistance, internal transactions in the donor
country, administrative costs of donors, support to NGOs, as well as unallocated or unspecified ODA).
Source: CRS
19
billion (up from US$27 billion), infrastructure received US$35 billion (up from US$13
billion), emergencies at home and abroad received US$42billion (up from US$6 billion),
budget support received US$24 billion (up from US$15 billion) and production received
US$18 billion (up from US$6 billion). While all sectors experienced growth over the
period analyzed, proportional distribution across sectors varied. Emergencies at home and
abroad increased proportionally faster than other sectors (from 7 percent to 20 percent);
just as infrastructure (from 16 to 17 percent). In contrast, budget support declined (from 19
percent to 11 percent) as did debt relief (from 6 percent to less than one percent). The
proportion of social sector commitments remained largely unchanged from the beginning
to the end of the period (at 36-37 percent) though it peaked at 44 percent in 2007 and 43
percent in 2009 (Figure 13).
Figure 13: ODA Commitments by Sector
(US$ millions, 2019 prices)
31. Regional distribution. Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of total ODA has been growing
for nearly half a century, from roughly 22 percent in the 1960s and 1970s to about 35
percent in the 2000s, hitting a peak of 56 percent in 2006, before declining to 40 percent
in the early 2010’s and landing at 37 percent by 2019 (Figure 14). Several factors
contributed to the increases observed. For example, the 2006-increase was due to debt relief
operations, including the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). South and Central
Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Far East Asia have also remained major ODA
recipients over the entire period, although their respective shares have been fluctuating.
Source: CRS
20
Figure 14: Gross Official Development Assistance by Region
(Gross disbursements, US$ billions, 2019 prices)
32. Country programmable Aid (CPA) is a narrower measure introduced in 2007
as a proxy to better estimate ODA over which partner countries have a significant say
for programming purposes.
24
Over the 2000-2019 period, the share of CPA in ODA
declined from 69 percent to 56 percent due to a slow growth rate of only 3.6 percent per
year (Figure 15).
24
CPA consists of gross ODA disbursements by recipient but excludes spending which is: (1) inherently
unpredictable (humanitarian aid and debt relief); (2) entails no flows to the recipient country (administration
costs, student costs, development awareness and research and refugee spending in donor countries); or (3) is
usually not discussed between the main donor agency and recipient governments (food aid, aid from local
governments, core funding to NGOs, aid through secondary agencies, ODA equity investments and aid which
is not allocable by country). In addition, CPA does not net out loan repayments, as these are not usually
factored into aid allocation decisions.
Source: DAC Tables 2a and 2b
21
Figure 15: Evolution of ODA by Type
(Gross disbursements, US$ millions at 2019 prices)
33. Despite accounting for more than half of ODA disbursements, the share of CPA
has shown a decline in recent years due to increasing allocations for emergencies at
home and abroad and for global, regional, and donor programmed activities. The
share of CPA against non-CPA categories declined from 69 percent in 2000 to 56 percent
in 2019. For the purpose of this analysis, non-CPA expenditures were clustered into three
categories: emergencies at home and abroad (combining expenditures on refugees in donor
countries and humanitarian assistance in recipient countries); global, regional and donor
programmed activities (combining all expenditures that could not be allocated to a specific
developing country); and debt relief. The share of emergencies at home and abroad grew
from 11 percent to 21 percent (8.3 percent annual growth rate) and the share of global,
regional or donor programmed activities grew from 16 percent to 23 percent (6.5 percent
annual growth rate). Debt relief, which had been significant early in the last decade with a
peak of 39 percent of ODA in 2006, has declined substantially to less than one percent by
2019 (Table 4).
Table 4: Growth in ODA categories between 2000 and 2019
2000
US$
billion
2000-2019
Real
Increase
US$ billion
CAGR
2000-
2019
%
share
2000
%
share
2019
Country Programmable Aid
55.3
52.2
3.6%
69
56
Emergencies at home and abroad
8.8
31.6
8.3%
11
21
Global, regional or donor programmed activities
13.0
30.4
6.5%
16
23
Debt relief
3.4
-2.6
-7.5%
4
0
Total ODA
80.5
111.6
4.7%
100
100
Source: CRS and CPA database
Source: CRS and CPA database
22
34. The declining share of CPA is also apparent when disaggregating ODA by
country income group.
25
The trend of reducing share of CPA in net ODA is however more
pronounced for MICs than for LDCs/LICs. For instance, in 2019 CPA for LDCs/LICs
stood at 75 percent (US$43.7 billion) of net ODA, which is marginally less than the 78
percent (US$15.9 billion) observed in 2000. CPA for MICs also declined, from 85 percent
(US$34.5 billion) in 2000 to 69 percent (US$53.9 billion) in 2019.
35. The share of ODA contributed by bilateral donors has remained relatively
stable since 2000, at about 69 percent of total aid flows.
26
This relative share of funding
has been consistent since the mid-1970s. A breakdown by type of ODA is provided in
Figure 16. Bilateral donors contributed 64 percent of total CPA, 70 percent of global,
regional, and country unallocated activities, and 82 percent of humanitarian aid.
Figure 16: Distribution of Bilateral and Multilateral ODA by Type
27
(Gross disbursements, percent shares, 2000-2019)
Source: OECD DAC Table 2a
36. A significant share of bilateral ODA is implemented by multilateral
organizations, although core (non-earmarked funding) has decreased. Core or
multilateral ODA refers to donor contributions made to a recipient institution that (i)
conducts all or part of its activities in favour of development, (ii) is an international agency,
institution or organization whose members are governments or a fund managed
autonomously by such agency, and (iii) pools contributions so that they lose their identity
and become an integral part of its financial assets. In contrast, non-core or multi-bi ODA
refers to donor contributions earmarked for a specific sector, theme, country or region
through a multilateral institution (e.g., through a trust fund). Between 2011 to 2019, the
average share of bilateral ODA flows implemented by multilateral organizations amounted
to 52 percent, with 30 percent as core contributions and 22 percent as non-core (i.e.,
25
Given the significant amount of funding unallocated to specific recipient countries, CPA – which is
computed only at the country level – tends to show a higher proportion when computed by country income
category.
26
Total aid flows include the combined totals of bilateral and multilateral aid flows (excluding debt relief).
27
To allow for comparison of CPA and non-CPA ODA, this Figure uses disburement data. Other Figures in
this sub-section use commitment data. Comparisons should be undertaken with caution.
23
earmarked or “multi-bi”).
28
However, the overall use of multilateral channels by bilateral
donors declined over the period, as core contributions dropped from 37 percent of bilateral
ODA in 2011 to only 29 percent in 2019, while non-core contributions increased, but more
modestly, from 17 percent in 2011 to 23 percent in 2019 (Figure 17).
Figure 17: Implementation Channels for Bilateral ODA
29
(Commitments, percentages of total ODA)
Source: OECD DAC – Members' total use of the multilateral system (CRS)
37. In the 2010s, the largest and fastest growing multilateral channel was the United
Nations. The UN’s share of multilateral ODA increased from 28 percent in 2011 to 40
percent in 2019 as it received US$14.6 billion of additional funding (CAGR of 8.8 percent).
The growth was primarily in non-core (“multi-bi”) contributions (US$12.6 billion or a
CAGR of 10.7 percent) with only a modest increase in core contributions. Core
contributions to the EU institutions, the World Bank Group, and other multilateral
institutions
30
have grown more slowly, with increases balanced across core and non-core
contributions (Figure 18).
28
The balance of 48 percent was implemented by other channels such as the recipient country, the donor
itself, NGOs, or the private sector.
29
Data is shown only from 2011 onwards since earlier data is not available in a comprehensive fashion.
30
Other multilaterals cover primarily the IMF, WTO, as well as other smaller multilateral institutions.
Implem. by multilat
.
Implem. by other
channe
ls
24
Figure 18: ODA to and through Major International Organizations
(Commitments, US$ millions at 2019 prices)
Source: OECD DAC– Members' total use of the multilateral system (CRS)
38. Total ODA to IDA-eligible countries
31
has increased over time, with IDA’s share
increasing marginally. ODA gross flows to IDA-eligible countries nearly tripled in real
terms between 2000 and 2019 with a CAGR of 6.2 percent. IDA’s share of gross
disbursements increased from 12 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2019. For IDA-eligible
countries, financing from other multilaterals grew at a marginally slower rate compared to
IDA’s growth during the period (7.1 percent vs. 7.5 percent). Humanitarian aid grew
twelve-fold at a CAGR of 15 percent. The share of total debt relief in total ODA for IDA
countries peaked at 24 percent in the 2006, then fell back to 14 percent in 2011-12 and
became negligible thereafter.
39. IDA-eligible countries received more ODA as CPA in the 2000s than they did
on average during the 1990s, with IDA’s share increasing faster than other donors.
IDA’s share of country programmable aid for IDA-eligible countries grew, on a gross
disbursement basis, between 2000 and 2019, with a peak in 2019 and a low in 2006.
Between 2000 and 2019, IDA’s cumulative CPA was US$160 billion (at 2019 prices), or
about 19 percent of total CPA to IDA-eligible countries. Over the 2000-2019 period, CPA
provided by IDA grew by 270 percent in real terms, which was higher than the 243 percent
for other multilateral institutions and the 121 percent for bilateral donors (Figure 19).
31
IDA-eligible countries based on World Bank FY20 list.
25
Figure 19: Gross ODA Disbursements
to IDA-eligible Countries by Type and Source
(US$ million at 2019 prices, 2000-2019)
Source: DAC Table 2a and CRS
26
40. The global aid architecture has become increasingly complex. The past two
decades have been characterized by a proliferation of bilateral official finance providers
and of entities providing official finance in these countries; a growing number of
international organizations, funds, and programs, many of which are specialized in a
particular sector or theme; and an overall growth in private philanthropy (OECD, 2020).
32
These phenomena contributed to the progressive fragmentation of official finance into a
larger number of activities of smaller unit size at the recipient country level.
33
The first part
of this section discusses trends in proliferation in official finance, while the second reviews
trends in fragmentation of official finance.
41. The number of official finance providers and of entities providing official
finance increased significantly since 2000, largely through the emergence of new
bilateral donors and the multiplication of government agencies providing official
finance. The number of bilateral donors increased from a yearly average of 25 providers
during the 2000-2004 period to 43 providers during the 2015-2019 period, while the
number of multilateral donors increased more subtly from 22 to 27 over the same
period.
34
,
35
The number of entities providing official finance (i.e., agencies within donor
countries or organizations) increased even more dramatically during this period; from 145
bilateral entities in 2000-2004 to 411 in 2015-2019 (a 183-percent increase) and from 46
multilateral entities to 91 (a 98-percent increase) (Figure 20). This may be due partly to the
lack of full reporting at the beginning of the period.
42. The growth in entities providing official finance was a widespread phenomenon,
although particularly concentrated among bilateral donors. During the 2000-2004
period, 12 official finance providers (11 bilaterals and one multilateral, together
representing about one fourth of all providers) reported commitments made by more than
5 different entities (for a total of 135 entities). By 2015-2019, this number had increased to
32 providers (27 bilaterals and five multilaterals, now representing almost half of all
providers), committing resources through no less than 424 entities (Table 5).
32
About 8 percent of all reported official aid to developing countries has been provided through NGOs and
public-private partnerships.
33
Alternate terminology refers to proliferation of official finance providers and entities providing official
finance as source proliferation and proliferation of implementing agencies as use proliferation. Source
proliferation does not necessarily lead to use proliferation if activities are pooled at the country, sub-regional,
or regional levels.
34
Donor and entity counts extracted from the CRS database were corrected to address the issue of donors
only starting to report to the OECD at the activity level in the later years of the period analyzed. The
correction was done by comparing donor reporting at the aggregate level in the DAC database and by
analyzing public information on (i) the years when donors officially started their OFF contributions and (ii)
when entitites were established. This approach reduces the impact of CRS underreporting and ensures that
the observed growth in the number of donors and entitites is indeed mostly due to proliferation. Despite these
efforts, a marginal impact of underreporting, particularly at the entity level, cannot be completed excluded.
35
Calculations were made using five-year averages to reduce year-to-year fluctuations.
27
Figure 20: Proliferation of Official Financial Providers and Entities
Source: OECD/DAC – CRS, including corrections from authors
to address underreporting by official donors in earlier years
Table 5: Official Finance Providers by Number of Entities
No. of Official Finance Providers
No. of Entities Providing Official
Finance
2000-
2004
2005-
2009
2010-
2014
2015-
2019
2000-
2004
2005-
2009
2010-
2014
2015-
2019
Bilaterals
1 to 4 entities
14
10
12
16
28
25
26
40
5 to 9 entities
4
8
9
8
30
56
58
53
10 or more entities
7
8
14
19
87
107
228
318
Subtotal Bilaterals
25
26
35
43
145
188
312
411
Multilaterals
1 to 4 entities
21
22
22
22
28
30
35
38
5 to 9 entities
0
0
3
3
0
0
20
20
10 or more entities
1
1
1
2
18
19
19
33
Subtotal Multilaterals
22
23
26
27
46
49
74
91
All Providers
1 to 4 entities
35
32
34
38
56
55
61
78
5 to 9 entities
4
8
12
11
30
56
78
73
10 or more entities
8
9
15
21
105
126
247
351
Total
47
49
61
70
191
237
386
502
Source: OECD/DAC – CRS, including corrections from authors
to address underreporting by official donors in earlier years
43. A diverse set of delivery channels and implementing agencies also add to
implementation complexity, although it is not possible to fully measure the extent of this
proliferation. Donor governments themselves implemented only a small portion of the
activities they funded; in the 2010-2019 period, they implemented only 12.5 percent of their
25
22
26
23
35
26
43
27
Bilateral Providers Multilateral Providers
Number of Official Finance Providers
145
46
188
49
312
74
411
91
Bilateral Entities Multilateral Entities
Number of Entities Providing Official
Finance
2000-2004
2005-2009
2010-2014
2015-2019
28
commitments.
36
Logically, recipient governments were the dominant channel of
implementation during this period (43 percent of commitments), followed by donor
governments, multilaterals (11 percent), and NGOs (8 percent) (Figure 21). In the later part of
the period, more implementation by private sector institutions was reported. Delivery channels
varied by sectors based on the underlying characteristics of the activities involved.
37
Figure 21: Distribution of Official Finance by Implementation Channel
(Commitments, US$ millions and % of period total, 2019 prices)
Source: CRS
36
The period 2010-2019 was used for this analysis due to the better quality of the delivery channels data
available for that timeframe.
37
For more information on the use of delivery channels and their impact on aid effectiveness, please see the
principles from the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co‑operation (e.g., GPEDC, 2019).
29
44. The proliferation of official finance providers and entities providing official finance
has been a significant factor explaining the fragmentation of aid. While in theory an
increase in providers and entities could be managed through better programming and
coordination at the country level, in practice this has led to a growing fragmentation of official
flows (i.e., a larger number of individual commitments each of smaller financial size). This
phenomenon has been further exacerbated by a dispersion of small-scale free-standing
technical assistance as a modality of delivery.
45. The number of official finance activities appears to have increased significantly
since 2000, with fragmentation mostly concentrated in the social sectors and in bilateral
grants. The total number of official finance activities reported in CRS increased rapidly from
around 51,000 in 2000 to more than 203,000 in 2009, before stabilizing and even declining
slowly until a marked rebound in 2019 with over 222,000 activities.
38
Over this period, the
number of bilateral activities increased from 35,000 in 2000 to 156,000 in 2019, while the
number of multilateral activities increased from 16,000 to almost 66,000. A significant portion
of the observed fragmentation was due to an increase in the number of activities in the social
sectors, which increased from 26,000 to 119,000 and represented 54 percent of all activities in
2019 (Figure 22). Looking at the number of activities by type of flow, fragmentation also
appears to be concentrated in bilateral ODA grants, which increased in numbers from 35,000
grants in 2000 to 151,000 in 2019 while decreasing in average size (Figure 23).
Figure 22: Number of Official Finance Activities by Sector
(Number of flows recorded in CRS)
38
In general, a “transaction” signifies the allocation of funds to a specific activity (project or program) in a
given sector in a given recipient country. However, to improve the accuracy of CRS-based statistics,
providers sometimes choose to compile CRS reports at a finer level, in which case a “transaction” represents
a component of an activity. However, there are also cases where providers prefer to report at a more
aggregated level. A “transaction” can thus also be the sum of several aid activities.
Source: CRS
30
Figure 23: Number and Size of Official Finance Activities by Aid Type
Source: CRS
46. It should be noted that the observed growth in the number of OFF activities in the
CRS database is partly due to historical underreporting by some donors at the beginning
of the period. A number of both bilateral and multilateral donors only started to report all
activities to CRS in recent years, particularly since 2010. While correcting the count of official
donors and entities as presented in Section IV.A was relatively straightforward based on
publicly available information, correcting the count of OFF activities is not possible and it is
thus challenging to disaggregate the respective impacts of actual proliferation/fragmentation
and of underreporting on the observed growth. This analysis should be interpreted with
caution, particularly for the 2000-2009 period.
47. In terms of financial value, the average size of official finance activities in
developing countries has decreased by about one third since 2000, and by almost one half
for grants. ODA grants, which represented 86 percent of all individual OFF transactions in
2019, decreased sharply from an average value of US$1.5 million in 2000 to US$0.8 million
today (a 47-percent decrease). ODA loans decreased by 12 percent in value, from US$2.6
million to US$2.3 million. Equity investments also fell, from US$10.3 million to US$2.6
million. OOF loans were the only type of flow to increase in value over the past 20 years; with
a more than twofold increase from a US$5.3 million average value in 2000 to US$12.4 million
today (Table 6).
31
Table 6: Number and Average Size of Donor Funded Activities
(Number of transactions and average size in US$ millions in 2019 prices)
2000
2019
Transactions
Average Size
Transactions
Average Size
ODA Grants
36,830
1.5
190,319
0.8
ODA Loans
8,662
2.6
21,919
2.3
Equity
49
10.3
870
2.6
OOF Loans
5,688
5.3
9,248
12.4
Total
51,229
2.2
222,356
1.4
Source: CRS
48. While the data is clear about the proliferation of official finance providers and
the fragmentation of flows, there is limited systematic evidence regarding its impact
on transaction costs or aid effectiveness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that transaction
costs may be increasing, due to the rising number of implementation channels, providers,
and activities; the progressive earmarking of funding through multilateral and bilateral
channels; and the widespread use of technical assistance. However, since transaction costs
have not been systematically quantified, it is difficult to judge their impact on effectiveness.
Further, it is possible that broader engagement across ministries in donor governments
could improve the long-term potential for increased aid contributions. Finally, the trade-
offs between additional transaction costs and a larger number of options of financial
providers and implementing channels for recipient countries has not yet been fully
evaluated.
32
49. Financial flows to developing countries have grown steadily but with significant
increase in private sector finance and finance from the BRICS. During the last decade,
private finance grew by 10 percent a year while official finance grew by 2 percent a year.
In 2010, official finance represented 64 percent of total financial flows to the public sector;
a share that decreased to 52 percent in 2019, so that official and private finance were almost
equal. Within official finance, the BRICS countries provided 22 percent of official loans
to developing countries globally, and 50 percent of loans from bilateral sources.
50. Most funding for LDCs/LICs was concessional although they received only
around one fifth of total official finance. In contrast, most funding for MICs was in
the form of non-concessional assistance but larger in volume; MICs received the
majority of total official finance. During the last two decades, LDCs/LICs received 94
percent of financing as ODA, which represented only 30 percent of total ODA (and 22
percent of total official finance). MICs received 46 percent of ODA grants, 68 percent of
ODA loans and 85 percent of other official finance commitments.
51. The volume of funding which donors have not identified as allocated to specific
recipient countries grew to constitute a significant share of official finance by 2019
(US$70 billion or 22 percent of total OFF). Resources not assigned to specific countries
were often directed to global and regional public goods and to support for emergencies
(i.e., humanitarian aid and support to refugee in donor countries).
52. Concessionality of flows varied significantly by sector with grants deployed
primarily for social sectors and support for emergencies and loans for infrastructure.
In the past five years, 66 percent of grants were used to support activities in the social
sectors and for emergencies. Over the same period, 46 percent of loans were utilized for
infrastructure investments.
53. There was a modest growth in the number of official finance providers over the
past 20 years, but a 2.5x growth in the number of entities providing official finance.
Between 2000-2004 and 2015-2019, the number of official finance providers around the
world grew from 47 to 70 while the number of entities providing official finance grew from
191 to 502.
54. Official finance activities remain highly fragmented and continue to reduce in
size. Fragmentation appears to be concentrated in social sectors and in bilateral activities.
ODA grants, the dominant type of activity, were subject to the largest decrease: the average
size of a grant was US$1.5 million in 2000 but only US$0.8 million in 2019.
33
55. Three topics would benefit from additional research. First, a detailed review of
the impact of donor proliferation and aid fragmentation on aid effectiveness could help
shed light on the scope of the issue and its eventual impact on development outcomes.
Second, given the significant share of aid flows unallocated to specific recipient countries,
an analysis of aid beyond the country level could be useful. Finally, a more detailed
examination of the evolution of concessionality over time could help understand the impact
of fiscal pressures in donor countries on development financing, and on the availability of
grants for development activities, particularly considering the increased focus on debt
sustainability.
56. Proliferation and fragmentation and potential impact on aid effectiveness. The
CRS data already available could be further analyzed to identify potential patterns of
increasing proliferation and fragmentation by official finance providers, country income
groups, sectors and themes, implementation channels, and delivery modalities. In addition,
the analysis could be extended to a broader definition of fragmentation that includes
additional measures, such as the growing variety of financing instruments.
39
Given the
limited systematic evidence on the impact of these issues on aid effectiveness, further work
could be undertaken to review if the quantitative information on proliferation and
fragmentation and the findings from aid quality surveys (e.g., the Global Program for
Effective Development Cooperation or other systematic ratings) demonstrate discernable
patterns or drivers.
57. Aid beyond the country level. As previously noted, the volume of OFF not allocated
to specific countries grew significantly to reach US$70 billion in 2019. Country
unallocated OFF is composed of three main categories, which would benefit from further
study:
• Emergencies at home and abroad, which captured 21 percent of country unallocated
OFF in 2019. The composition of this type of assistance and its interaction with
other development assistance provided at the country level (particularly CPA) could
be an interesting topic for further research.
• Regional commitments, which now represent 40 percent of country unallocated
OFF. The composition of this type of assistance and its interaction with other
development assistance provided at the country level could also benefit from
additional investigation.
• Global and regional public goods. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be readily
available estimates of their size or a commonly accepted methodology to calculate
them. Efforts are underway, including through the OECD DAC’s new measure of
Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD).
40
Given the growing
emphasis on global public goods like crisis response and tackling climate change,
this could also constitute an important topic for further research.
39
See for instance the “spaghetti bowl” of development finance instruments in OECD, 2019.
40
For more information, consult the TOSSD portal and its online resources at https://www.tossd.org/
34
58. Evolution of concessionality. The allocation of concessional funds from donors has
been driven by a combination of criteria, including country circumstances (particularly
income level and access to market resources), sectors (particularly health), and the
leveraging of private sector resources. There is scope to better understand how
concessionality has evolved over time with three potential areas for further analysis: (i)
examining changes in the supply of concessionality embedded within official finance,
differentiating between bilateral and multilateral sources, (ii) analyzing concessional
finance from a recipient’s perspective, including by country income group and by sector,
and (iii) better understanding the link between concessionality of flows received by
countries and their level of debt sustainability.
35
Development Committee. (2015). From Billions To Trillions: Transforming Development
Finance. Washington DC.
Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation. (2019). Making
development co-operation more effective. Paris and New York: OECD/UNDP.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012). The Architecture of
Development Assistance. Paris.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2019). Global Outlook on
Financing for Sustainable Development. Paris.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2020). Multilateral
Development Finance. Paris.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2021). Global Outlook on
Financing for Sustainable Development. Paris.
Piemonte, C., Cattaneo, O., Morris, R., Pincet, A., & Poensgen, K. (2019). Transition
Finance: Introducing a new concept. Paris: OECD Development Co-operation
Working Papers.
United Nations. (2015). Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International
Conference on Financing for Development. New York.
United Nations Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development. (2021).
Financing for Sustainable Development Report. New York.
World Bank. (2007). Aid Architecture: An Overview of the Main Trends in Official
Development Assistance. Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships Vice
Presidency, Washington DC.
World Bank. (2008). Aid Architecture Update: An Overview of the Main Trends in
Official Development Assistance. Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships
Vice Presidency, Washington DC.
World Bank. (2011). CFP Working Paper No. 8 Finance for Development: Trends and
Opportunities in a Changing Landscape. Concessional Finance and Global
Partnerships Vice Presidency, Washington DC.
36
Data Sources and Terminology Used
OECD DAC Terminology
1. The analysis in this paper utilized two OECD DAC databases which both contain
data reported by donor countries and multilateral agencies. The DAC database
provides aggregate information and the CRS database provides transaction level
information. While there have been substantial differences between the financial
information in the two databases in the past, there has been greater convergence in
more recent years (see Figure 12 of the main report).
2. Reporting is provided on the Official Development Assistance, Other Official
Flows and Private Flows.
3. Official Development Assistance (ODA): Resource flows (grants, loans and equity)
to countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients (developing
countries) and to multilateral agencies which are: (a) undertaken by the official
sector; (b) with promotion of economic development and welfare as the main
objective; and (c) at concessional financial terms. Until 2018, loans were
concessional if their Grant Element was at least 25 percent (calculated at a 10
percent discount rate of 10 percent). Since 2019, both grant element and discount
rate vary based on the Income Group of the recipient country (see
http://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-
finance-standards/modernisation-dac-statistical-system.htm). In addition to
financial flows, Technical Co-operation is included in ODA. Equity provided by
the official sector excludes Foreign Direct Investment which is included under
private flows.
4. Other Official Flows: Transactions by the official sector with countries on the DAC
List of ODA Recipients which do not meet the conditions for eligibility as ODA,
either because they are not primarily aimed at development, or because they have
less than the required grant element. These include: i) Grants to developing
countries for representational or essentially commercial purposes; ii) Official
bilateral transactions intended to promote development but having a grant element
less than that required to be treated as concessional; iii) Official bilateral
transactions, whatever their grant element, that are primarily export-facilitating in
purpose. This category includes by definition export credits extended directly to an
aid recipient by an official agency or institution ("official direct export credits");
iv) The net acquisition by governments and central monetary institutions of
securities issued by multilateral development banks at market terms; v) Subsidies
(grants) to the private sector to soften its credits to developing countries; and vi)
Funds in support of private investment.
5. Private Flows: Consist of: (a) flows at market terms financed out of external private
sector resources (i.e. changes in holdings of private long-term assets held by
37
residents of the reporting country); and (b) private grants (i.e. grants by non-
governmental organizations and other private bodies, net of subsidies received from
the official sector).
6. The three types of reported flows are aggregated into other indicators:
a. Total Official Flows: Consist of the sum of Official Development
Assistance (ODA) and Other Official Flows (OOF).
b. Official Development Financing (ODF), measured for recipient countries
only, is defined as the sum of their receipts of bilateral ODA, concessional
and non-concessional resources from multilateral sources, and bilateral
other official flows made available for reasons unrelated to trade, in
particular loans to refinance debt.
c. Total Receipts, Net: in addition to Official Development Assistance, this
includes in particular: other official bilateral transactions which are not
concessional or which, even though they have concessional elements, are
primarily trade facilitating in character (i.e., "Other Official Flows'');
changes in bilateral long-term assets of the private non-monetary and
monetary sectors, in particular guaranteed export credits, private direct
investment, portfolio investment and, to the extent they are not covered in
the preceding headings, loans by private banks. Also includes flows from
the multilateral sector which are not classified as concessional.
7. Data is provided for actual funds transferred (i.e., disbursements) and funds
contractually agreed to be transferred in the future (i.e., commitments). A
commitment is a firm written obligation by a government or official agency, backed
by the appropriation or availability of the necessary funds, to provide resources of
a specified amount under specified financial terms and conditions and for specified
purposes for the benefit of a recipient country or a multilateral agency.
a. Commitments are considered to be made at the date a loan or grant
agreement is signed or the obligation is otherwise made known to the
recipient (e.g., in the case of budgetary allocations to overseas territories,
the final vote of the budget should be taken as the date of commitment). For
certain special expenditures, e.g., emergency aid, the date of disbursement
may be taken as the date of commitment.
b. Bilateral commitments comprise new commitments and additions to earlier
commitments, excluding any commitments cancelled during the same year.
Cancellations and reductions in the year reported on of commitments made
in earlier years are reported in the CRS, but not in the DAC questionnaire.
c. Commitments of capital subscriptions, grants and loans to multilateral
agencies show the sum of amounts which are expected to be disbursed
before the end of the following year and amounts disbursed in the year
reported on but not previously reported as a commitment. For capital
subscriptions in the form of notes payable at sight, the expected amount of
deposits of such notes constitute the amount committed.
38
OECD DAC Reports
8. The DAC database provides reporting on aggregated data along several
dimensions.
a. Aggregate ODA, OOF and Private Flows by DAC countries/providers and
EU institutions in current and constant prices as well as in the donor’s
national currency (Table DAC1) with no breakdown by recipient. The
conversion from current to constant prices is undertaken using deflators for
each donor country.
b. ODA disbursements to countries and regions by all bilateral and multilateral
donors reporting to DAC in current and constant prices (Table DAC2a).
c. OOF and export credit disbursements by DAC countries/providers to
countries and regions in current and constant prices (Table DAC2b).
d. ODA commitments to countries and regions in current and constant prices
(Table DAC3a).
e. Private Direct Investment and other private capital (Table DAC4) by DAC
and non-DAC reporting countries.
f. ODA by donor and sector in current and constant prices (Table DAC5).
g. ODA tying status by country (Table DAC 7b).
h. Total Official Development Flows by recipient country and region.
i. Total Official Flows by recipient country and region. Total disbursements
by the official sector by recipient country and region are reported as gross
or net flows in current and constant prices.
9. The Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database provides disaggregated
transaction-by-transaction data. The CRS Aid Activity database provides a set of
readily available basic data that enables analysis on where aid goes, what purposes
it serves and what policies it aims to implement, on a comparable basis for all DAC
members. Data are collected on individual projects and programmes. Focus is on
financial data but some descriptive information is also made available.
10. CRS data can be analyzed in current and constant prices by:
a. Official donor.
b. Sector.
c. Flows (i.e., ODA grants; ODA loans; equity; OOF; and private finance) and
flow types (i.e., commitments or gross disbursements).
d. Delivery channel (i.e., public sector; Non-Governmental Organizations and
civil society; Public-Private Partnerships; multilateral institutions; teaching
institutions, research institutes or think tanks; private sector institutions; and
other delivery channel).
e. Types of aid (i.e., budget support; core contributions and pooled programs
and funds; project type interventions; experts and other technical assistance;
39
scholarships and other student costs in donor countries; debt relief; other in-
donor expenditures; and other administrative costs).
11. Given recently introduced changes in reporting methodology, only 2018 data is
presented in grant equivalent terms in current and constant prices.
12. CRS also presents projects identified as supporting global environmental objectives
and supporting gender equality and women’s empowerment.
13. CRS identifies DAC members’ total use of the multilateral system as well as private
philanthropy for development.
Recipient Country Classifications
14. Country Income Groups: ODA eligible countries are classified in to two groups
i.e. Least Developed Countries and Low-Income Countries (LDCs and LICs) and
Middle-Income Countries (MICs) (https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-
sustainable-development/development-finance-
standards/DAC_List_ODA_Recipients2018to2020_flows_En.pdf).
Sector Classifications
15. Sector Classifications: For the purpose of this analysis, sectors were grouped as
follows:
a. Infrastructure (inclusive of Transport & Storage; Banking & Financial
Services; Business & Other Services; Communications Infrastructure;
Energy).
b. Production (Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing; Construction; Industry &
Mining; Tourism; Trade)
c. Debt Relief.
d. Social Sectors (Education; Government & Civil Society; Health; Other
Social Infrastructure & Services; Population & Reproductive Health; Water
Supply & Sanitation).
e. Budget Support and Cross-Cutting (General Budget Support and
Assistance; Multi-Sector / Cross-Cutting).
f. Emergencies at Home and Abroad (Humanitarian Aid; Refugees in Donor
Countries).
g. Other (Administrative Costs of Donors; Sectors Not Specified).
16. Sector Allocable ODA: ODA flows aimed at fostering a particular sector in the
recipient country. Excludes contributions that are not allocable by sector (e.g.,
balance-of-payments support, actions relating to debt, emergency assistance, and
administrative costs of donors, Support to NGOs and Unallocated/unspecified
ODA).
Country Programmable Aid
17. CPA is the proportion of aid that is subjected to multi-year programming at country
level, and hence represent a subset of ODA outflows. It takes as a starting point
40
data on gross ODA disbursements by recipient but excludes spending which is: (1)
inherently unpredictable (humanitarian aid and debt relief); or (2) entails no flows
to the recipient country (administration costs, student costs, development
awareness and research and refugee spending in donor countries); or (3) is usually
not discussed between the main donor agency and recipient governments (food aid,
aid from local governments, core funding to NGOs, aid through secondary
agencies, ODA equity investments and aid which is not allocable by country); or
(4) CPA does not net out loan repayments, as these are not usually factored into aid
allocation decisions. CPA is therefore a gross concept.
Debtor Reporting System (DRS) Terminology and Reporting
18. In Section II of this report, the World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System (DRS)
database is utilized. DRS data, reported by developing countries, focuses on
official loans (i.e., bilateral and multilateral loan commitments as reported by
developing countries) and private finance.
19. The DRS captures detailed information at the loan level for external borrowing of
reporting countries using standardized sets of forms. These include:
a. Description of Individual External Public and Private Debt Publicly
Guaranteed (Form 1); Schedule of Drawings and Principal and Interest
Payments for Individual External Public and Private Debt Publicly
Guaranteed (Form 1a). This data is reported quarterly within 30 days of the
close of the quarter.
b. Individual External Public Debts and Private Debts Publicly Guaranteed
Current Status and Transactions during Period (Form 2); and Revisions of
Forms 1 and 2 (Form 3). This data is reported annually by March 31 of the
year following the report year (Form 2) and as needed (Form 3).
c. External Private Non-Guaranteed Debt (Form 4). This is reported annually,
in a more aggregate way by March 31 of the year following the report year.
