Austria. Development Co-operation Review (1999)
With a net Official Development Assistance (ODA) of 456 million United States dollars (USD) [5.6 billion Austrian schillings (ATS)] in 1998, Austria ranked 16th among the 21 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Member countries. Its official development assistance/gross national product (ODA/GNP) ratio of 0.22% was slightly below the DAC average of 0.24%.
One pending issue in the Austrian aid programme is that it still needs an overall strategy binding all the expenditures that Austria considers as ODA to a clear set of development objectives. Currently, Austria's reporting of bilateral ODA includes three components - concessional export credits, assistance to refugees in Austria, and imputed student costs - which do not have development as their primary objective. Although the combined share of these components has been reduced significantly from the level of 55% of total ODA in 1994, they still attract a considerable share of 18%. This amount is almost equivalent to the 20% ODA spent for the bilateral programme under the Department for Development Co-operation (DDC) within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MOFA).
Long abstract
