Comparison of Financial Efforts for Development
Our focus is on real transfers of grants that represent the genuine financial effort of donor countries to provide funding for development purposes. These are assessed in relation to economic capacity measured by the Gross National Income (GNI). The chart shows the trends since 2005, the year when member countries that had joined the European Union before 2002 committed to reach the UN target ratio of providing at least 0.7 percent of GNI as Official Development Assistance no later than 2015.
Whereas some donors have achieved the agreed target, the majority still lags behind and many contribute only a fraction of what it should be to meet the resource needs of disadvantaged countries. The wide variety demonstrates the lack of a fair burden sharing. If it is true that the countries most affected by the financial crisis are found at the bottom of the ranking, others such as Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria have little reason to continue to neglect their responsibility for achieving the international goals of development financing.
Some notable trends can be observed against the background of rather stable grant ratios seen for the bulk of traditional European donors. On the positive side, United Kingdom nearly achieved the UN target irrespective of increasing lending or other controversial items included in OECD figures. On the negative side, Spain literally disappeared from the ranks of substantive donors and Netherlands fell considerably below the target level. Germany, France and others made some substantial, yet insufficient, efforts to increase genuine aid in the first years, but showed a stagnating or declining tendency in more recent years.
How to use:
By clicking on country names in the legend you can remove or add them to be shown in the chart. Thereby you can follow the trend of specific countries or compare the financial effort of selected donors.