Data on donors’ bilateral aid by sector can be easily extracted from the DAC’s online databases.  In order to provide a more complete picture of donors’ aid to a specific sector, their multilateral ODA also needs to be taken into account.  This is done by calculating “imputed multilateral ODA” to this sector as follows:

1.   Based on multilateral agencies’ reporting to the DAC, we first calculate each agency’s flows to a given sector as a share of the agency’s total aid (core resources only).  Three-year average data are used (data on a multilateral agency’s outflows in years n through n+2 are used for calculating imputed multilateral ODA through that agency in year n+2).

2.   The share obtained in step 1 for any given agency is applied to donors’ contributions to the core resources of that agency in year n+2.  The resulting amounts represent the imputed flows from donors to a particular sector through this agency. 

 

Imputed multilateral ODA can only ever be an approximation.  (See also: OECD's methodology for calculating imputed multilateral aid.)

 

Example:
We are interested to estimate Germany's 2007 ODA contribution to the health sector through core funding to UNICEF. The calculation is as follows:

1.   UNICEF allocated on average y% of its aid to the health sector in 2005-07.

2.   Germany’s imputed multilateral aid to the health sector through UNICEF was y% of Germany's 2007 core contribution to UNICEF; in this case: 0.174 x USD 8.24 million = USD 1.4 million.