Overseas Development Aid (ODA) jumped by 6.1 percent in 2013, reaching almost 98 billion euros, which is a record number according to the fresh statistics of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Thus, last year’s figures marked a “rebound” after two years of decreasing aid. The OECD statistics says that 17 OECD countries out of the total member base of 28 countries increased their ODA last year, making the overall aid spending of the organization about 0.3 percent of gross national income (GNI). This is however still less than a half of what advanced countries promised to meet by 2015.
OECD Secretary General, Angel Gurria, said that it was heartening to see governments increasing their development aid budgets once more despite the financial constraints of many developed countries. Yet, Ms Gurria remained worried about the trend of decreasing aid donations for the poorest economies as most of development aid is targeted at middle-income countries.
Despite this positive overall trend, the development advocacy Oxfam warned that this was far too little to meet 2015 goals and pointed out that even the big Development Aid Contributors (OECD-DACs) supplied much of its assistance through “tied aid” that must be spent in the country which provided it. Natalia Alonso, the head of Oxfam’s European Union office said that it was particularly bad that most of the EU’s wealthiest countries were very far from reaching their development goals. Ms Alonso also criticized the EU’s practice to count “funding that never gets to poor countries”, such as debt relief and export credits, as development aid. In her opinion, this is inacceptable.
EU Development Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, commented that the EU clearly had a long way to go to meet their collective commitment, but measures taken by some member states showed that the EU could keep its promises even under difficult fiscal circumstances.
