So here’s a big surprise. Until last year, global aid flows were declining in the wake of the financial crisis – a trend that was widely expected to continue. But here’s what emerged when the OECD’s 2013 aid statistics came out last month:
Development aid rose by 6.1% in real terms in 2013 to reach the highest level ever recorded, despite continued pressure on budgets in OECD countries since the global economic crisis. Donors provided a total of USD 134.8 billion in net official development assistance (ODA), marking a rebound after two years of falling volumes, as a number of governments stepped up their spending on foreign aid.
An annual survey of donor spending plans by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) indicated that aid levels could increase again in 2014 and stabilise thereafter.
Admittedly, there are two important qualifiers here. One is that while aid may be at an all-time high in absolute terms, that’s not true for the arguably more important measure of aid as a proportion of donor countries’ gross national income: in 2013 they gave 0.30% of GNI, as compared to 0.32% in 2010 (and way lower, of course, than the 0.7% target).
The other point, flagged up by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria in his comments on this year’s statistics, is that the trend of falling aid to the neediest countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (which saw a 4% real terms decrease against 2012), is still happening and appears likely to continue in the future. The new aid stats also show that donor countries only gave 0.09% of their GNI to least developed countries in 2012 – as compared to 0.10% the year before.