Glossary of statistical terms and concepts of development finance

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See Total Receipts.

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The committee of the OECD which deals with development co-operation matters.

The DAC list of ODA Recipients shows developing countries and territories eligible for receiving Offical Development Assistance (ODA).

The list is designed for statistical purposes, not as guidance for aid or other preferential treatment. In particular, geographical aid allocations are national policy decisions and responsibilities. The list is revised by the DAC every 3 years. 

Any action officially agreed between creditor and debtor that alters the terms previously established for repayment.

This may include forgiveness (extinction of the loan), or rescheduling which can be implemented either by revising the repayment schedule or extending a new refinancing loan.

The DAC has developed deflators for resource flows that convert data in current dollars (i.e. using the exchange rates prevailing in the year of the flow) to data in constant dollars (i.e. to dollars with the purchasing power they had in a recent reference year).

The release of funds to or the purchase of goods or services for a recipient; by extension, the amount thus spent. Disbursements record the actual international transfer of financial resources, or of goods or services valued at the cost to the donor. In the case of activities carried out in donor countries, such as training, administration or public awareness programmes, disbursement is taken to have occurred when the funds have been transferred to the service provider or the recipient.

They may be recorded gross (the total amount disbursed over a given accounting period) or net (the gross amount less any repayments of loan principal or recoveries on grants received during the same period). It can take several years to disburse a commitment.

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See Grant Element.

Transfers made in cash, goods or services for which no repayment is required.

Reflects the financial terms of a transaction: interest rate, maturity (interval to final repayment) and grace period (interval to first repayment of capital). It measures the concessionality (softness) of a loan,calculated as the difference between the face value of a loan and the discounted present value of the service payments the borrower will make over the lifetime of the loan, expressed as a percentage of the face value. Four factors determine the grant element:

• interest rate (per cent per annum);
• grace period, i.e. the interval from commitment date to the date of the first payment of amortisation;
• maturity, i.e. the interval from commitment date to the date of the last payment of amortisation; and
• discount rate used to determine the present value of future payments. For bilateral loans to the official sector, the discount rates used in the ODA calculation are differentiated by DAC income group: 9 per cent in the case of loans to LDCs and other LICs, 7 per cent in the case of loans to LMICs and 6 per cent in the case of loans to UMICs. For loans to multilateral institutions, the discount rate is 5 per cent in the case of global institutions and multilateral development banks, and 6 per cent for other multilateral organisations, including sub-regional organisations.

For bilateral loans to the official sector, minimum grant elements for qualifying as ODA are also differentiated by DAC income group: 45 per cent in the case of loans to LDCs and other LICs, 15 per cent in the case of loans to LMICs and 10 per cent in the case of loans to UMICs. For loans to multilateral institutions, it is 10 per cent.
[Note: the grant element concept is not applied to the market-based lending operations of the multilateral development banks. Instead, these are classified as concessional if they include a subsidy (“soft window” operations) and non-concessional if they are unsubsidised (“hard window” operations)].

A transaction in which the donor country retains formal title to repayment but has expressed its intention in the commitment to hold the proceeds of repayment in the borrowing country for the benefit of that country.

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Transfers for which repayment is required. Only loans with maturities of over one year are included in DAC statistics. Data on net loans include deductions for repayments of principal (but not payment of interest) on earlier loans. This means that when a loan has been fully repaid, its effect on total net ODA over the life of the loan is zero.

Used of loans with an original or extended maturity of more than one year.

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The total amount disbursed over a given accounting period, less repayments of loan principal during the same period, no account being taken of interest.

In DAC statistics, net flow minus payments of interest.

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Official Development Assistance for which the associated goods and services must be procured in the donor country or among a restricted group of other countries, which must however include substantially all aid recipient countries. Partially untied aid is subject to the same disciplines as tied aid credits and associated financing.

Consist of flows at market terms financed out of private sector resources (i.e. changes in holdings of private long-term assets held by residents of the reporting country) and private grants (i.e. grants by non-governmental organizations and other private bodies, net of subsidies received from the official sector).
In data presentations which focus on the outflow of funds from donors, private flows other than foreign direct investment are restricted to credits with a maturity of greater than one year and are usually divided into:

• Foreign direct investment: Investment made to acquire or add to a lasting interest in an enterprise in a country on the DAC List of ODA Recipients. "Lasting interest" implies a long-term relationship where the direct investor has a significant influence on the management of the enterprise, reflected by ownership of at least 10% of the shares, or equivalent voting power or other means of control. In practice, it is recorded as the change in the net worth of a subsidiary in a recipient country to the parent company, as shown in the books of the latter.

• Private export credits: See export credits.

• Securities of multilateral agencies: This covers the transactions of the private non-bank and bank sector in bonds, debentures, etc., issued by multilateral institutions.

• Bilateral portfolio investment and other: Includes bank lending and the purchase of shares, bonds and real estate.

The DAC statistics on the purpose of aid cover three dimensions: the sector of destination, the form or type of aid, and the policy objective(s) of aid. Data are collected on individual commitments in the Creditor Reporting System (CRS), and in the form of annual commitment aggregates in the DAC Questionnaire.

A 5-digit code used for recording information on the purpose (sector of destination or other purpose – cf. Sector Classification) of individual aid activities. Purpose codes identify the specific area of the recipient’s economic or social structure the transfer is intended to foster.

DAC and CRS code lists : .xlsx, .xls, and database

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Includes both:

• grants to nationals of aid recipient countries receiving education or training at home or abroad, and
• payments to consultants, advisers and similar personnel as well as teachers and administrators serving in recipient countries (including the cost of associated equipment).

Assistance of this kind provided specifically to facilitate the implementation of a capital project is included indistinguishably among bilateral project and programme expenditures, and not separately identified as technical co-operation in statistics of aggregate flows.

The terms of repayment of a loan may be the following:

• Equal principal payments (EPP) denotes a fixed schedule of equal installments of principal adding up to the face value of the loan. Interest is charged on outstanding principal and the amount of individual service payments decreases with each payment of principal.

• In the annuity method, each service payment is established as an equal amount, within which the interest component declines with time while the principal component increases.

• Lump sum means the loan is repaid in a single amount (principal and interest) at maturity. If interest is paid at various earlier dates, then the repayment schedule is a particular case of equal principal payments and is reported under that category.

• If the type of repayment does not correspond to any of the three above, the code "other" is used.

Official grants or loans where procurement of the goods or services involved is limited to the donor country or to a group of countries which does not include substantially all aid recipient countries.

Tied aid loans, credits and associated financing packages are subject to certain disciplines concerning their concessionality levels, the countries to which they may be directed, and their developmental relevance so as to avoid using aid funds on projects that would be commercially viable with market finance, and to ensure that recipient countries receive good value.

The inflow of resources to aid recipient countries includes, in addition to ODF, official and private export credits, and long-term private transactions (see private flows). Total receipts are measured net of amortisation payments and repatriation of capital by private investors. 

Bilateral flows are provided directly by a donor country to an aid recipient country. Multilateral flows are channeled via an international organisation active in development (e.g. World Bank, UNDP).

In tables showing total receipts of recipient countries, the outflows of multilateral agencies to those countries is shown, not the contributions which the agencies received from donors.

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Loans for the purpose of trade and which are not represented by a negotiable instrument. They may be extended by the official or the private sector. If extended by the private sector, they may be supported by official guarantees.