The OECD’s aid statistics seek to inform taxpayers in OECD members and other countries about what is being spent on aid overseas. In doing so, they enable the public to see what governments are doing with their money. These statistics are completely transparent and publicly available to users.
ODA trends and statistics
The OECD is the only official source of reliable, comparable, and complete statistics on official development assistance (ODA). From high-level overviews to granular perspectives, OECD statistics on ODA help our users answer the question, “Who is spending what, where, and when?”
Key messages
The OECD’s database on individual aid activities, allows users to understand the key characteristics of ODA to help inform the policies and programmes of development co-operation providers in low- and middle-income countries.
The database, with information on more than 60 attributes variables for each activity, provides a comprehensive perspective on what ODA is doing worldwide.
Many OECD governments have agreed to international commitments, enshrined in domestic legislation, on where and how to spend their aid to maximise results or benefit the neediest countries.
An example is the UN target to spend 0.7% of a provider’s national wealth on ODA. The OECD’s aid statistics help to hold its members and other providers accountable to meeting such commitments.
Members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) are required to report their ODA statistics to the OECD. Many bilateral providers outside of the DAC have been reporting their statistics to the OECD on a voluntary basis, as have multilateral agencies on outflows from their core resources.
These initiatives have improved the OECD’s ability to provide a comprehensive perspective on development finance flows to partner countries.
Context
Official development assistance in historical perspective: 1960-2023
Member countries of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee gave USD 224 billion in official development assistance in 2023, a historical high dating back to 1960, when the OECD first started collecting its aid statistics. This volume amounted to 0.37% of their collective national wealth. A range of other official providers also give ODA and report their statistics to the OECD.
Components of official development assistance across provider countries, 2000 onwards
When looking into the characteristics of ODA, the increase from 2022 to 2023 was driven, in part, by humanitarian aid and contributions to the core budgets of multilateral organisations. By contrast, aid for processing and hosting refugees in provider countries dropped.
ODA to Ukraine, 2010-23
In 2022 and 2023, DAC members significantly increased their ODA to Ukraine in the wake of to Russia’s war of aggression.
ODA in times of crisis, 2000-23
In 2023, preliminary estimates suggest that DAC members increased aid to sub-Saharan Africa and Least Developed Countries from the previous year while decreasing flows to support the processing and hosting refugees within provider countries.
