Official Development Assistance

The Official Development Assistance or Official Development Assistance (short: ODA) includes the provision of financial (FZ ), technical (TC) and human services ( PZ) in the context of official development assistance as defined by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Definition

The Official Development Assistance is defined as a government grant in the form of grants and loans to the developing countries of the so-called DAC list:

• Are assigned by the public sector;
• Serve primarily to promote the economic development and the improvement of living conditions; and
• Are equipped with special rates, which in the case of loan means that these funds must have a grant element of at least 25 % ( untied financing).

This definition was developed in 1972 by the Development Assistance Committee and has remained largely unchanged. However, any charge other than Official Development Assistance has been recognized in the following years. So since 1979, administrative expenses of the donor country, from 1984 cost of college courses by students of the recipient country in the donor country and from the 1980s, costs for refugees in the first year of their stay. The latter option was used on a larger scale only since 1991. Also, debt forgiveness can be recognized as Official Development Assistance. The adoption of loans for military purposes has been recognized at the initiative of the United States from 1990 to 1992, but then counted to other public services.

Statistics

The OECD publishes annual statistics, in which the financial volume of the Official Development Assistance of a country is reported as a percentage of gross national income (GNI). Since 2003, the ODA also include new activities of peacekeeping and security, and some debt relief for developing countries.

For the years 2004 and 2011, the OECD published the following figures:

Together contributed the DAC ODA in 2011 amounted to U.S. $ 134.04 billion, representing 0.31 % of the GNI of all DAC. The early as 1970 before the UN General Assembly formulated promise of developed countries to devote at least 0.7 % of GNI to development aid, met by only five states.