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Measuring aid for trade
The Aid for Trade Statistical Queries page offers an easy access to aid-for-trade statistics (through an interface called QWIDS) to measure aid-for-trade flows. Users can extract and dowload the latest aid-for-trade statistics from 2002 onwards (i.e. volume, origin, and aid categories for over 150 developing countries and territories, including project-level information) reported to the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS).
Predefined aid-for-trade data queries
How is aid for trade measured?
The WTO Task Force concluded that aid for trade comprises the following categories: (a) technical assistance for trade policy and regulations (e.g. helping countries to develop trade strategies, negotiate trade agreements, and implement their outcomes); (b) trade-related infrastructure (e.g. building roads, ports, and telecommunications networks to connect domestic markets to the global economy); (c) productive capacity building, including trade development (e.g. supporting the private sector to exploit their comparative advantages and diversify their exports); (d) trade-related adjustment (e.g. helping developing countries with the costs associated with trade liberalisation, such as tariff reductions, preference erosion, or declining terms of trade); and, (e) other trade-related needs, if identified as trade-related development priorities in partner countries' national development strategies.
The CRS - a database covering around 90% of all ODA - was recognised as the best available data source for tracking global aid-for-trade flows. The CRS aid activity database was established in 1967 and collects information on ODA and other official flows (OOF) to developing countries. It is the internationally recognised source of data on aid activities (geographical and sectoral breakdowns) and is widely used by governments, organisations and researchers active in the field of development. For the OECD, the CRS serves as a tool for monitoring specific policy issues, including aid for trade. The policy guidelines for CRS reporting are approved by DAC members as represented on the DAC Working Party on Statistics. The OECD collects, collates, and verifies the consistency of the data, and maintains the database.
The CRS enables the tracking of aid commitments and disbursements, and provides comparable data over time and across countries. Unless otherwise stated, aid activity data are expressed in United States dollars at the exchange rate prevailing in the year of the flow (i.e. in current dollars). Analyses of trends in aid over longer periods should be based on constant dollars so as to take account of inflation and exchange rate variations.
The use of an existing database led to significant savings of time and resources to effectively track aid-for-trade flows. The use of CRS entailed some loss of detailed information about trade-related technical assistance and trade development that was collected in the past in the joint OECD-WTO Trade Capacity Building Database (TCBD). However, several modifications have been made to the CRS to adapt it to aid-for-trade needs (i.e. a new CRS category "trade-related adjustment" was introduced from the 2008 data collection on 2007 activities).
It should be kept in mind that the CRS does not provide data that match exactly all of the above Task Force-defined aid-for-trade categories. In fact, the CRS provides proxies under the following five headings.
i) Technical assistance for trade policy and regulations. In the CRS, five purpose codes are used to cover "trade policy and regulations" activities, in contrast to the 20 TCBD codes. These five sub-categories are: (a) trade policy and administrative management; (b) trade facilitation; (c) regional trade agreements; (d) multilateral trade negotiations; and, (e) trade education/training.
ii) Economic infrastructure. Aid commitments for trade-related infrastructure are proxied in the CRS by data under the heading "economic infrastructure". This heading covers data on aid for communications, energy, transport and storage. To know how close the CRS proxies are (e.g. how much of the hypothetical energy project relates to trade), the CRS data must be compared with donors' knowledge of the specific features of their infrastructure aid.
iii) Productive capacity building (including trade development). Data on commitments of aid for productive capacity building exist under the CRS category "building productive capacity". Since the first monitoring exercise, the CRS allows components of a productive capacity building project to be marked (using the "trade development policy marker") as relevant to trade development. It identifies trade development activities within the broader aid-for-trade category of building productive capacity (i.e. activities marked as contributing "principally" or "significantly" to trade development).
iv) Trade-related adjustment. This category identifies contributions to developing country budgets to assist the implementation of trade reforms and adjustments to trade policy measures by other countries, and alleviate shortfalls in balance-of-payments due to changes in the world trading environment.
v) Other trade-related needs. The CRS covers all ODA, but only those activities reported under the above four categories will be identified as aid for trade. Data on "other trade-related needs" cannot be gleaned from the CRS. To estimate the volume of such 'other' commitments, donors would need to examine aid projects in sectors other than those considered so far - e.g. in health and education - and indicate what share, if any, of these activities have an important trade component. A health programme, for instance, might permit increased trade from localities where the disease burden was previously a constraint on trade. Consequently, accurately monitoring aid for trade would require comparison of the CRS data with donor and partner countries' self-assessments of their aid for trade.
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For further information on the definition of ODA, of commitments versus disbursements, or other methodological issues (e.g. guidelines for trade development policy marker and the purpose codes concerned), see the CRS Reporting Directives.
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