The OECD Development Assistance Committee's 1999 review of Luxembourg's development aid programmes and policies. It finds that Luxembourg's aid programme has made considerable headway since the first review by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 1993. The government has implemented most of the DAC's recommendations following that review. Measures taken by the government include: a new law defining the aims of co-operation; selection of target countries; an increase in the number of staff assigned to the aid programme; an agreement governing relations between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Co-operation (MFA) and Lux-Development, the executive agency.
Over the last five years the volume of Luxembourg's official development assistance (ODA) has risen by an average of 15 per cent a year in real terms. Luxembourg's development aid reached 0.55 per cent of its gross national product (GNP) in 1997. This advance has been made possible by the unanimous support of political parties and public opinion. The non-governmental organisations occupy a special place in the aid programme since a quarter of bilateral aid is channelled through them.
Luxembourg delivers its aid entirely in grant form, and largely untied. The sharp rise in the volume of aid makes it important to control and improve the quality of projects and programmes by means of more stringent selection procedures, closer monitoring of projects and systematic [ex-ante] and [ex-post] evaluations. To that end it is crucial to reduce the number of recipient countries, to strengthen further human resources for the aid programme and to extend training for co-operation staff.
