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OECD Development Assistance Committee: High Level Meeting Final Communiqué

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OECD Development Assistance Committee: High Level Meeting Final Communiqué

OECD Development Assistance Committee: High Level Meeting Final Communiqué
Photo credit: UNDP | AusAid

The OECD Development Assistance Committee DAC convened its 2014 High Level Meeting from 15 to 16 December 2014 in Paris.

The principal objective of the meeting was the modernisation of the OECD DAC development finance measurement framework to ensure that it is credible and fit-for-purpose in today’s global context.

The decisions and actions taken in the meeting will enable the OECD and its members to make an important contribution to future monitoring of the financing framework underpinning the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals.

This meeting was the culmination of an imperative fully endorsed by political leaders at the DAC High Level Meeting in December 2012. They called on the DAC to adapt its long-standing statistical concepts to the profound changes in the global financial and economic landscape.


Final Communiqué, 16 December 2014

  1. We, the members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), convened at high level in Paris on 15-16 December 2014. We welcomed the five new members who have joined the Committee since our last High-Level Meeting in 2012: the Czech Republic, Iceland, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. We also welcomed the United Arab Emirates as the first country beyond the OECD membership to become a Participant of our Committee. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank and non-DAC OECD members – Chile, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, Mexico and Turkey – participated in our deliberations.

  2. We have witnessed tremendous development progress over the past 15 years. Globally, extreme poverty has been halved, substantial progress has been made toward reaching gender parity in school enrolment at all levels and in all developing regions and child mortality has been halved as has the proportion of people without access to safe water. Yet the job of ending global poverty is unfinished, and we encounter continued instability and conflict, humanitarian crises and rising inequality. Addressing all these challenges in a sustainable way requires a renewed global partnership for development.

  3. We met as the world prepares the ground for the post-2015 agenda, an ambitious global framework for achieving inclusive, sustainable development for all. Three decisive events taking place next year will sharpen the vision and clarify the means of implementation underpinning this agenda: the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, the United Nations Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and the 21st Conference of the Parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

  4. As we shape the new sustainable development goals for the post-2015 era, we want to ensure our contributions make the difference that is needed. We invite the OECD to fully use its interdisciplinary expertise to support members and partners as they design and implement the range of policies needed to achieve these goals in all countries. This new set of goals will require both financial and non-financial means and efforts. As regards the financing challenge, a wide array of domestic and international resources – both concessional and commercial in nature – needs to be mobilised from public and private sources and from all providers. These different resources must also be used effectively, drawing on their respective comparative advantages. In this context, we welcome relevant efforts from across the OECD on development finance, including in the areas of taxation and investment. We consider that improving global access to reliable statistics regarding all these resources will be essential for all stakeholders, including developing and provider countries, to optimally plan, allocate, use and account for development resources. Reliable statistics will also facilitate national, regional and global transparency and accountability.

  5. OECD DAC statistics on development finance are a global public good that informs policy choices, promotes transparency and fosters accountability. Following a mandate that we adopted at the 2012 High Level Meeting, we began work to modernise our statistical system, measures and standards to ensure the integrity and comparability of data on development finance and create the right incentive mechanisms for effective resource mobilisation. We have today taken stock of progress achieved in this regard, and have taken decisions in a number of areas.

  6. Official Development Assistance (ODA) will remain a crucial part of international development co-operation in implementing the post-2015 agenda, particularly for countries most in need. We also acknowledge the important role of international private flows. Domestic resources, however, will continue to be the main pillar of development finance for the broad majority of developing countries.

  7. We note that despite challenging fiscal circumstances in many OECD countries, we have maintained high levels of ODA – which reached an all-time high of USD 134.8 billion in 2013. We reaffirm our respective ODA commitments, including those of us who have endorsed the UN target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) as ODA to developing countries, and agree to continue to make all efforts to achieve them.

  8. We also agree to allocate more of total ODA to countries most in need, such as least developed countries (LDCs), low-income countries, small island developing states, land-locked developing countries and fragile and conflict-affected states. We have agreed today to commit to reversing the declining trend of ODA to LDCs. Those members who have committed to the specific UN target of 0.15-0.20 per cent of GNI as ODA towards these countries reconfirm their commitment. We underscore the importance of collective action and individual steps to better target ODA towards countries most in need (See Annex 1). We will monitor progress in line with each member’s commitments through the OECD peer review process, and additionally on an aggregate DAC level at our senior level meetings.

  9. In line with the 2012 High Level Meeting mandate, we have carefully examined how the ODA measure could be strengthened to reflect the nature of today’s development co-operation and to better address current and future development challenges, while maintaining its core character. We remain committed to maintaining the integrity of the ODA definition and further strengthening transparency regarding its measurement and use, including through defining clearly concessionality and updating the reporting guidance on peace and security expenditures. We also recognise that ODA can help bring in private investment to support development, and that it is essential to capture the breadth of official support provided to developing countries.

  10. While most ODA is provided in the form of grants, concessional loans form an important part of the measure. However, differences have developed in the way members interpret the unclear “concessional in character” criterion of the ODA definition. We therefore agree to modernise the reporting of concessional loans to make it easier to compare the effort involved with that in providing grants, by introducing a grant equivalent system for the purpose of calculating ODA figures. This means that under the new reporting system, ODA credit counted and reported will be higher for a grant than for a loan. Furthermore, among loans which pass the tests for ODA scoring, more concessional loans will earn greater ODA credit than less concessional loans. Alongside reporting on a grant equivalent basis, ODA figures will continue to be calculated, reported and published on the previous cash-flow system. This means that data on actual disbursements and repayments of loans will continue to be collected and published in a fully transparent manner.

  11. We have further decided to assess concessionality based on differentiated discount rates, consisting of a base factor, which will be the IMF discount rate (currently 5%), and an adjustment factor of 1% for UMICs, 2% for LMICs and 4% for LDCs and other LICs. This system, combined with a grant equivalent method, is expected to incentivise lending on highly concessional terms to LDCs and other LICs. To ensure that loans to LDCs and other LICs are provided at highly concessional terms, only loans with a grant element of at least 45% will be reportable as ODA. Loans to LMICs need to have a grant element of at least 15%, and those to UMICs of at least 10%, in order to be reportable as ODA.

  12. Consistent with our commitment to pay particular attention to debt sustainability when extending loans to developing countries, we agree that loans whose terms are not consistent with the IMF Debt Limits Policy and/or the World Bank’s Non-Concessional Borrowing Policy will not be reportable as ODA. We request the WP-STAT to prepare the revised Reporting Directives, in accordance with our agreement further detailed in Annex 2, for endorsement by the DAC by the end of 2015.

  13. We recognise the importance of strengthening private sector engagement in development and we want to encourage the use of ODA to mobilise additional private sector resources for development. We recognise that the present statistical reporting system does not fully reflect the changing way in which members are engaging with the private sector, nor does it incentivise innovation. We take note of progress already made in developing a modern taxonomy of financial instruments, and methodologies to measure private sector resources mobilised, for example through guarantees. We agree to urgently undertake further work to reflect in ODA the effort of the official sector in catalysing private sector investment in effective development. In doing so, we will explore further the institutional and instrument-specific approaches that have been developed by members, and potentially other approaches, with the aim of concluding at our next meeting. We will continue to collaborate with agencies with special expertise in this field, such as donors’ Development Finance Institutions and other bilateral institutions that use private-sector instruments, and similar multilateral institutions.

  14. The development agenda is becoming broader. It is therefore important to recognise and further incentivise the efforts that are being made above and beyond ODA. Accordingly, we agree to continue to develop the new statistical measure, with the working title of Total Official support for Sustainable Development (TOSD). This measure will complement, not replace, the ODA measure. It will potentially cover the totality of resource flows extended to developing countries and multilateral institutions in support of sustainable development and originating from official sources and interventions, regardless of the types of instruments used and associated terms. The components of this measure have been discussed and will be refined, working with all relevant stakeholders, in the lead-up to the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa. Its ultimate parameters will be clarified once the post-2015 agenda has been agreed. We will also collect data on resources mobilised by official interventions from the private sector using leveraging instruments such as guarantees. We support continued work to establish an international standard for measuring the volume of private finance mobilised by official interventions and want to explore whether and how this could be reflected in a new measure.

  15. Supporting developing countries to optimally use the increased diversity of funding sources that they can access today will be important. The transparency of resource flows reaching developing countries plays a role in enhancing the effectiveness of development co-operation. We will therefore strengthen our dialogue with developing countries to ensure that our statistical system contributes to meeting their information and planning needs. Further, we will continue to develop our systems for measuring resource inflows to developing countries, building on our longstanding work with country programmable aid.

  16. Recognising that building peaceful and inclusive societies will be an increasingly important part of the development agenda, we will generate greater political momentum in support of peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts. We agree to further explore how support in this area could be better reflected in our statistical system through a possible broader recognition in TOSD, and through updating ODA reporting instructions. In doing so, we will ensure that the main objective of ODA remains the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries. We aim to complete this work in time for our next meeting.

  17. We have come some distance in our efforts to upgrade and modernise our statistical systems and tools in order for them to contribute to monitoring the financing framework underpinning the post-2015 agenda. By implementing these changes, we reaffirm our commitment to remain the centre of excellence of high-quality statistics on official development finance. We will explore ways of engaging more systematically with other stakeholders (e.g. partner countries, other providers of development finance, foundations, civil society, private sector, the United Nations and other international organisations) in the further development and use of our statistical system, measures and standards. We welcome the reporting of development co-operation data from an increasing number of sovereign states beyond DAC members (such as European Union Member States, Israel, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates) as well as other development actors (including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and more than 30 multilateral institutions), and encourage other providers to follow their example.

  18. We strongly support the work of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC), agreed in Busan, as a leading international policy platform and a hub to “share, support and spread development success”, including through the contribution of voluntary initiatives and building blocks. We believe the GPEDC’s flexible, multi-stakeholder, action-focussed approach means that it can play a useful role in helping to implement the post-2015 agenda. We stand ready – with other international fora such as the Development Cooperation Forum – to drive efforts at the international level to anchor the quality of co-operation and the development effectiveness principles in the post-2015 agenda, and at country level to foster learning and exchange of experience in achieving sustainable development results. We reaffirm our existing aid and development effectiveness commitments and resolve to further engage with other providers. We note that a strengthened GPEDC monitoring framework can be a useful tool to measure and report on progress in support of future efforts to implement the post-2015 agenda at developing country level.

  19. We look forward to actively contributing to the UN-led process to shape the ambitious post-2015 agenda, and the renewed global partnership to support its implementation, including the future accountability and monitoring system. We will engage with international, regional and local initiatives and actions for a successful outcome of the decisive meetings in 2015.

  20. We will reconvene end-2015/early-2016 to take stock of progress in implementing the decisions we have taken today, and in carrying out additional analytical work to bring to closure our effort to modernise the DAC statistical system for the post-2015 era.

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