ODA Reform is an independent campaign for accurate Official Development Assistance (ODA) statistics. We examine how OECD DAC rules measure aid, challenge overcounting in loans, debt relief and private sector instruments, and call for independent governance that reflects real donor effort.
Each year, the OECD publishes statistics on Official Development Assistance (ODA) purporting to show, amongst other things, how individual donor countries are performing against the UN target that they spend 0.7% of their Gross National Income on ODA.
However, in recent years, motivated to make themselves look as generous as possible while under pressure from their finance ministries to spend as little as possible, the “Donors Club” of the DAC has developed multiple ruses to overcount ODA. In many cases, donor governments are now scoring amounts massively higher than the sums they are actually spending on development. At least one DAC member is even boasting about this, revealing that it has been scoring more than €5 for each €1 it spends in extending ODA loans. Other estimates show that overcounting of some programmes may be as high as 700% or even 1000%.
The ramifications of overcounting ODA, often called overseas aid, go far beyond mere issues of statistical accuracy. Taxpayers are being duped; real assistance levels are being cut; developing countries are being saddled with debt instead of benefitting from grants; and trust in multilateral solutions for delivering on the SDGs and tackling climate change is being eroded.
This independent campaign brings together Steve Cutts, former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and OECD Chief of Staff, with aid-statistics specialists Simon Scott and Hedwig Riegler. We donate our time and expertise to identify flaws in aid accounting and advocate practical reforms. The campaign receives no external funding. Meet the team.
We will try to cover all serious contributions on the various aspects of this issue, and are willing to host submissions even if we do not agree with them, as we want this site to prompt debate. Comments and contributions should be sent to ODAReform@icloud.com.
To clean up ODA – establishing fair and robust methodologies and giving it a robust and politically independent governance system – will take a huge effort. We hope you will join us in this endeavour, and we will in due course be providing further information on opportunities for you to become involved.
Steve Cutts