Official development assistance (ODA) is the term used by Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members to refer to what most people would call aid. ODA includes activities carried out with the economic development and welfare of developing countries as their main objective. It is a measure of donor effort, including grants and grant equivalents of concessional loans.

The DAC publishes a list of countries and organisations that report to the OECD on their aid and other financial flows to developing countries. The list encompasses DAC members, countries that are not members, and multilateral organisations, as well as several of the largest private philanthropic foundations working for development.

The DAC maintains a List of ODA-eligible countries which it reviews every three years.

In addition to ODA (both bilateral and multilateral), the DAC collects and publishes data on other official flows (OOF), official export credits and private flows.  See our databases and our page on Resource flows to developing countries beyond ODA.

An international Task Force has also developed a new international standard for measuring the full array of resources in support of the 2030 Agenda: Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD). It is designed to monitor all official resources flowing into developing countries for their sustainable development, but also private resources mobilised through official means. It measures contributions to international public goods – up to now “invisible” in development finance statistics – that help countries reach their Sustainable Development Goals. See www.tossd.org.

Bilateral aid represents flows from official (government) sources directly to the recipient country.

Multilateral aid represents core contributions from official (government) sources to multilateral agencies which use them to fund their own developmental programmes. Multilateral agencies, such as United Nations agencies, are governed by representatives of governments, unlike non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

A donor can contract a multilateral agency to deliver a programme or project on its behalf in a recipient country: the funds are typically counted as bilateral flows, and often referred to as Bi/Multi. Donor funds channelled through NGOs are also typically counted as bilateral flows.

Double counting is avoided by being clear about what is being measured. Donors report the following flows to the DAC:

• Bilateral ODA flows to recipient countries
• Multilateral ODA - core contributions to ODA-eligible multilateral organisations
• Earmarked ODA channeled through multilateral organisations (Bi/Multi) to a specific recipient (the multilateral organisation is contracted to deliver a specific project)
• Other official flows
• Private flows originating in the donor country

These flows are added together and represent the total official and private flows.

Multilateral organisations report their outflows to the DAC, including details of the recipients such as the country or region. When it comes to calculating the total for a recipient country, the total flows reported by donors are  used except donors’ core contributions to multilateral agencies. Instead, data recorded on outflows from multilateral organisations to a recipient country are added to bilateral flows.

This method results in more detailed information on the spending of ODA in a given recipient country.

ODA to multilateral development organisations from donor countries is pooled, which makes it an integral part of the recipient institution’s financial assets that can then be used to meet an agency’s running and programme costs. Non-core funding includes instances where the donor specifies how the money is spent.

• Technical terms are defined in the DAC Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts.
• Reporting directives and rules used by donor countries can be found in the Statistical Reporting Directives.

ODA can take the form of (i) grants, where financial resources are provided to developing countries free of interest and with no provision for repayment, or (ii) soft loans, which have to be repaid with interest, albeit at a significantly lower rate than if developing countries borrowed from commercial banks.

ODA flows: Until recently, grants and loans were valued in the same way: by recording the flows of cash that were granted, or the face value of loans that were lent to developing countries, deducting any repayments on the loans. This “cash basis” or “flow basis” method, has been used to produce ODA headline figures until 2018.

ODA grant equivalent: From 2018 onwards, instead of recording the actual flows of cash between lender and borrower, the headline measure of ODA is based on the loans’ “grant equivalents”. This new way of measuring aid loans aims to better reflect the actual effort by donor countries –and their taxpayers: only the “grant equivalent” of loans is recorded as ODA. The more generous the loan, the higher the ODA value.

For the sake of transparency, ODA flows are still collected and published, in parallel of ODA grant equivalents.

There are two main data updates each year. In April, high-level (aggregated) figures are published on total ODA by donor countries for the previous calendar year. In December, these figures are updated with detail on how the funds were allocated by recipient country, sector (health, education, etc), geographical region, and income group (least developed, Upper Middle Income, etc). In December, detail is also available right down to individual project level. In addition to these two main updates, partial database updates occur in June and September each year.

Country programmable aid (CPA) is the portion of ODA donors programme spent in individual countries, over which partner countries could have a significant say. CPA is much closer than ODA to capturing the flows of aid that go to the partner country, and has been proven in several studies to be a good proxy of aid from DAC donors recorded at country level.

Commitments measure donors’ intentions and allow to monitor the targeting of resources to specific purposes and recipient countries. They fluctuate as aid policies change, and reflect how donors’ political commitments translate into action. They give an indication about future flows.

Disbursements show actual payments made each year. They show the realisation of donors’ intentions and the implementation of their policies. They are necessary to examining the contribution of donors’ actions to development achievements. They describe aid flows better from the recipient’s point of view.

Analysing the relation between commitments and disbursements can provide useful insights on aid delivery. Commitments are often multi-year and subsequent disbursements spread over several years. In DAC statistical reporting systems, commitments, even if multi-year, are recorded in whole in the year they are signed (the use of moving averages in statistical presentations smoothens the resulting fluctuations). Subsequent disbursements of an earlier commitment are recorded annually, in the years they are transferred from donors to recipients. An increase in aid allocations over time is thus visible in disbursements data only with a few years’ time lag. Consequently, disbursements in one year cannot be directly compared to commitments in the same year, as disbursements may relate to commitments originally recorded in different years.

These are two different gateways to the same aid and development related data. OECD.Stat is the OECD’s data warehouse. It contains datasets from across the OECD, including those relating to aid and development which can be found under Themes/Development. QWIDS (Qwery Wizard for International Development Statistics) is a query tool for datasets relating to aid and development. QWIDS is easy to use and automatically selects the best dataset from which to extract data based on the search terms you select.

The DAC publishes data both at aggregate level (e.g. figures aggregated by donor, recipient, sector, modality, etc), and in the separate Credit reporting System (CRS) dataset at disaggregated individual project level.

In the past, aggregate and disaggregated data were collected through different questionnaires. For historical data, therefore, totals in the DAC and CRS datasets do not always match. The discrepancies can arise from:

• Coverage gaps, especially for earlier years – not all donors provided data compatible with the level of detail required for the CRS;
• Different bases being used – e.g. it may be that for some entries, aggregate data were reported as commitments, whereas activity level (CRS) reporting may reflect actual disbursements.

To search individual data sets from the DAC and CRS datasets in OECD.Stat, look under Themes/Development then select a dataset. Alternatively, you can use QWIDS and have data extracted automatically from the most appropriate dataset, based on your search terms.

When calculating net ODA flows, loan repayments are recorded as negative and deducted from ODA and loans. In some cases, loan repayments are higher than new ODA and net ODA will show as a negative number.

The symbols used and their meanings are:

1. For datasets viewed in OECD.Stat and using QWIDS:

2. When viewing data on OECD.Stat or using QWIDS:

Viewing the latest year for which data is otherwise available:

..      Data not available (in a particular field)

Viewing early years’ data:

..      Nil

3. Additional symbols applicable to the Development Cooperation Report:

-      Nil or not applicable
..     Data not available

Creditor Reporting System (CRS) data on commitments from 1995 and disbursements from 2002 are available for viewing in OECD.Stat and via QWIDS.

Earlier commitment and disbursement data is available for download, but there are gaps in the coverage for some donors and years yet this data is still useful for some analytical purposes, e.g. on ODA loans.

To download CRS data, go to the CRS dataset in OECD.Stat, then use the Export drop-down menu above the data and select Related files. Click on the file name you would like to download. A dialogue box will open at the bottom of the screen with options for what you can do with the file. All CRS text files can be converted to either Excel 2007 or a later version (you need to use the vertical bar ‘|’ as delimiter and none as text qualifier) or any other software which enables the download of files with more than 65,000 rows.

The bulk files enable data users to carry out multi-faceted analysis by filtering different categories such as donor, recipient, purpose and channel.

A text search on the project descriptions provides the data users with further information on the relevant activities, although the quality of results will depend on that of the descriptive information provided by donors.

Markers are applied to project level data across a number of sectors to help the international community track the inclusion of specific policy objectives in development co-operation activities.

The CRS currently tracks 11 markers, as follows:

1.   Gender equality
2.   Nutrition
3.   Inclusion and empowerment of persons with disabilities
4.   Aid targeting the objectives of the Framework Convention on Climate Change – climate change adaptation
5.   Aid targeting the objectives of the Framework Convention on Climate Change – climate change mitigation
6.   Aid to environment
7.   Democratic and inclusive governance
8.   Reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health (RMNCH)
9.   Aid targeting the objectives of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)
10.   Aid targeting the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity
11.   Aid targeting the objectives of the Convention to Combat Desertification

See definitions and methodology of markers in Annexes 19 and 20.

Markers can assume three values. They are scored 2 if the policy objective is the principal (primary) objective of the activity. They are scored 1 if the policy objective is a significant (secondary) objective of the activity. They are scored zero if the activity was screened but the policy objective was not identified. Activities can be marked with more than one marker. Different sets of marker data cannot be simply added together without considering overlaps, as this might lead to double counting of projects that support more than one policy objective.

• Data for all markers is available via the “Export” function of the CRS tables in OECD.Stat (export related files).
• Additionally, specific tables are available in OECD.stat for Gender equality and the Environment.
• Climate change related development finance, including multilateral and bilateral non-concessional development finance.

Since the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, many questions have been raised on whether activities in response to the pandemic can be counted as ODA. Answers are included in the OECD Secretariat's interpretation on eligibility, based on the Reporting Directives, which provide guidance for reporting on 2020 and 2021 ODA .

Read more about COVID-19 related activities in ODA

Official support to refugees from an ODA-eligible country can be reported in ODA. The ODA-eligibility rules vary depending on whether the support is provided in ODA-eligible countries or in donor countries:

• Support to refugees hosted in ODA-eligible countries: expenses can generally be fully reported as ODA.
• Support to internally displaced people (IDPs) in ODA-eligible countries is fully ODA-eligible.
• Support to refugees hosted in DAC donor countries or in non-DAC provider countries that are not ODA recipients: expenses for temporary sustenance of refugees can be reported in ODA during the first twelve months of their stay, prior to and post recognition of refugee status. This is called in-donor refugee costs.

Read more about in-donor refugee costs in ODA

Support given to developing countries under projects related to migration can count as ODA. One key element for a programme to be ODA-eligible is to aim primarily to promote development in the recipient country, rather than to address domestic concerns in donor countries. The DAC has agreed in 2022 on principles and criteria to guide ODA reporting in these situations with the goal of preserving the integrity of ODA. Visit our online page for more details about the principles and other frequently asked questions.

Frequently asked questions: ODA and migration