The OECD collaborates with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the monitoring and evaluation of the Aid for Trade initiative and collects Aid for Trade data based on the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS).
The WTO Aid for Trade Task Force set out the scope of Aid for Trade in 2006. It places Aid for Trade within official development assistance (ODA). To separate it from the rest of ODA, the Task Force agreed a monitoring definition with six categories:
Aid for Trade flows are monitored using the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS), the international reference database on ODA and other official flows to developing countries, with records going back to 1967. The CRS records aid at the level of individual projects and programmes, by recipient and by sector. Reporting rules are agreed by members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), and the OECD collects, checks and maintains the data.
The CRS classifies aid by sector and purpose, not by trade objective, so it cannot reproduce all six categories exactly. Instead, it provides proxies under four headings:
CRS heading
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Coverage
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Trade policy and regulations
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Trade policy and administrative management, trade facilitation, regional trade agreements, multilateral trade negotiations, trade education and training
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Economic infrastructure
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Transport and storage, communications, energy generation and supply
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Building productive capacity
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Banking and financial services, business and other services, agriculture, forestry, fishing, industry, mineral resources and mining, tourism
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Trade-related adjustment
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Support to developing country budgets to implement trade reforms and adjust to trade policy changes by other countries
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Commitments and disbursements are reported in gross terms on a cash-flow basis. The amounts show the cash granted, or the face value of loans extended, by official providers to ODA-eligible countries.
This aligns with the methodology developed by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators and agreed at the 48th session of the UN Statistical Commission in March 2017 for SDG Target 8.a: Increase Aid for Trade support for developing countries, in particular least developed countries.
Commitments reflect providers’ intentions and signal future flows.
Disbursements record actual payments and describe aid more closely from the recipient’s perspective.
Totals combine bilateral flows with the outflows of multilateral organisations to recipient countries. Bilateral core contributions to multilateral agencies are excluded so the same funds are not counted twice. Private sector instruments are reported separately in ODA statistics and are not included in Aid for Trade totals.
Creditor Reporting System (CRS) in the OECD Data Explorer
