Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

commitment is a firm written obligation by a government or official agency, backed by the appropriation or availability of the necessary funds, to provide resources of a specified amount under specified financial terms and conditions and for specified purposes for the benefit of a recipient country or a multilateral agency. Members unable to comply with this definition should explain the definition that they use. -- Commitments are considered to be made at the date a loan or grant agreement is signed or the obligation is otherwise made known to the recipient (e.g. in the case of budgetary allocations to overseas territories, the final vote of the budget should be taken as the date of commitment). For certain special expenditures, e.g. emergency aid, the date of disbursement may be taken as the date of commitment. -- Bilateral commitments comprise new commitments and additions to earlier commitments, excluding any commitments cancelled during the same year. Cancellations and reductions in the year reported on of commitments made in earlier years are reported in the CRS, but not in the DAC questionnaire. -- In contrast to bilateral commitments, commitments of capital subscriptions, grants and loans to multilateral agencies should show the sum of amounts which are expected to be disbursed before the end of the next year and amounts disbursed in the year reported on but not previously reported as a commitment. For capital subscriptions in the form of notes payable at sight, enter the expected amount of deposits of such notes as the amount committed.

Destination of Official Development Assistance Disbursements. Geographical breakdown by donor, recipient and for some types of aid (e.g. grant, loan, technical co-operation) on a disbursement basis (i.e. actual expenditures). The data cover flows from bilateral and multilateral donors which focus on flows from DAC member countries and the EU Institutions.

Note: CPA data for 2018 and 2019 are projections from the 2016 Survey on Forward Spending Plans. Country Programmable Aid (CPA), outlined in our Development Brief  and also known as “core” aid, is the portion of aid donors programme for individual countries, and over which partner countries could have a significant say. CPA is much closer than ODA to capturing the flows of aid that goes to the partner country, and has been proven in several studies to be a good proxy of aid recorded at country level. CPA was developed in 2007 in close collaboration with DAC members. It is derived on the basis of DAC statistics and was retroactively calculated from 2000 onwards

The objective of the CRS Aid Activity database is to provide a set of readily available basic data that enables analysis on where aid goes, what purposes it serves and what policies it aims to implement, on a comparable basis for all DAC members. Data are collected on individual projects and programmes. Focus is on financial data but some descriptive information is also made available.

Distribution of net official development assistance (ODA) is defined as geographical aid allocations. Net ODA may be distributed by income group (least developed countries, other low-income countries, lower middle-income countries, upper middle-income countries, unallocated and more advanced developing countries and territories) or by geography (sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central Asia, other Asia and Oceania, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and unspecified). The OECD Development Assistance Committee's "List of ODA Recipients" shows developing countries and territories eligible for ODA. The list is revised every three years. It is designed for statistical purposes, not as guidance for aid distribution or for other preferential treatment. In particular, geographical aid allocations are national policy decisions and responsibilities. This indicator is measured in million USD constant prices, using 2018 as the base year.

This dataset presents members' total use of the multilateral system i.e. both their multilateral aid ("Core contributions to") and bilateral aid channelled through ("Contributions through") multilateral organisations. These data originate from members' reporting at item-level in the CRS and are published here starting with 2011 data (item-level data for multilateral aid is not complete in CRS for earlier years).

Official development assistance (ODA) is defined as government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries. Loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. Aid may be provided bilaterally, from donor to recipient, or channelled through a multilateral development agency such as the United Nations or the World Bank. Aid includes grants, "soft" loans and the provision of technical assistance. The OECD maintains a list of developing countries and territories; only aid to these countries counts as ODA. The list is periodically updated and currently contains over 150 countries or territories. 

Other official flows are official sector transactions which do not meet the ODA criteria, e.g.:  i.) Grants to developing countries for representational or essentially commercial purposes;  ii.) Official bilateral transactions intended to promote development but having a grant element of less than 25 per cent;  iii.) Official bilateral transactions, whatever their grant element, that are primarily export-facilitating in purpose. This category includes by definition export credits extended directly to an aid recipient by an official agency or institution ("official direct export credits");  iv.) The net acquisition by governments and central monetary institutions of securities issued by multilateral development banks at market terms;  v.) Subsidies (grants) to the private sector to soften its credits to developing countries [see Annex 3, paragraph A3.5.iv)b)];  vi.) Funds in support of private investment.

Private transactions are those undertaken by firms and individuals resident in the reporting country.

Note: 2017 figures are Preliminary. Official and Private Flows - Disbursements and Commitments. Aggregate data (no breakdown by recipient) on ODA, OOF, private and NGO data by donor, type of aid and flow. The data cover flows from all bilateral and multilateral donors except for Tables DAC1, DAC4, DAC5 and DAC7b which focus on flows from DAC member countries and the EU Institutions.

Official Development Financing (ODF), measured for recipient countries only, is defined as the sum of their receipts of bilateral ODA, concessional and non-concessional resources from multilateral sources, and bilateral other official flows made available for reasons unrelated to trade, in particular loans to refinance debt.

Total Official Flows: the sum of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Other Official Flows (OOF) represents the total (gross or net) disbursements by the official sector at large to the recipient country shown.

Total Receipts, Net: in addition to Official Development Assistance, this heading includes in particular: other official bilateral transactions which are not concessional or which, even though they have concessional elements, are primarily trade facilitating in character (i.e., "Other Official Flows''); changes in bilateral long-term assets of the private non-monetary and monetary sectors, in particular guaranteed export credits, private direct investment, portfolio investment and, to the extent they are not covered in the preceding headings, loans by private banks. Flows from the multilateral sector which are not classified as concessional are also included here.