Data on international development assistance are among least trustworthy ones in the entire economic profession. “Publish What You Fund” monitors the transparency of aid donor organizations in order to track progress, encourage further transparency, and hold organizations to account. Aid Transparency Index 2013 reveals that actually only few donor agencies have been willing to report large amounts of handy information on their activities. The 2013 index revealed that the most transparent aid agencies come from the United States (UNDP) or the United Kingdom (GAVI), with transparency ration of 83 and 89 percent respectively. UNDP and GAVI were in fact the only organizations that were ranked as “good”.
The index studied 67 organizations which had to comply with 39 different indicators, based on what is available on donors’ websites. The average result was 32.6 percent, and Chinese donor agencies ranked the poorest – just 2.2 percent. Except for the two organizations in the “good” category, there are 13 organizations in “fair” category, 23 in “moderate”, 22 in “poor”, and 12 organizations in “very poor” category. Interestingly, most EU member states ranked rather low on the list, with Hungary, Cyprus, France, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Latvia “leading” the list from the bottom up, preceded only by China and Malta, which obtained zero ranking.
International and national aid donor agencies performed also rather poorly. For example, the UNICEF received the rank of 14 percent, while U.S. Defense obtained 23 percent, and the U.S. state itself 31 percent. In contrast, the World Bank’s IDA and IFC did relatively well receiving 88 and 56 percent respectively. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development obtained score of 55 percent, and Europe’s best aid donor agencies, except for the UK, were from Netherlands (77 percent), Denmark (76 percent), and Sweden (72 percent).
Based on comparisons with previous years, “Publish What You Fund” has concluded that progress is indeed being made, but much more comparable information still needs to be published.
