Sections:
Statistics on International Development 2006
Section 2
How much is the UK expenditure on International Development?
1. This section first shows how much the UK has spent on international development in recent years and then draws comparisons between the UK and other donors.
2. UK development expenditure is reported for the three classifications described in detail in Section 1 ‘What counts as aid?’:
- DFID aid programme;
- Gross Public Expenditure on Development (GPEX), and
- Official Development Assistance (ODA).
3. Breakdowns within the tables highlight different types of bilateral expenditure (described in section 1 and in the glossary) and spend via various multilateral organisations.
The DFID Aid Programme in 2005/06
4. In 2005/06 total DFID programme expenditure was £4,413m; over half of this (57 per cent, £2,504m) was bilateral assistance and 38 per cent (£1,674m) was channelled through multilateral organisations. The remaining 5 per cent £234m) was spent on administration costs (see Table 1 for figures and Table 3.1 for percentages).
5. Figure 1 provides a summary breakdown of DFID's bilateral expenditure
(excluding administration costs) in 2005/06. Just over a third (35 per cent) was
provided as financial aid. Over half of this (21 per cent) was Poverty
Reduction Budget Support (PRBS) with other financial aid contributing a further
14 per cent. Around a quarter (27 percent) of bilateral expenditure was
disbursed as "grants and other aid in kind" and 19 per cent took the form
"technical cooperation". Most of the remainder (16 per cent) was humanitarian
assistance. More detail is provided in Table 1
(27 kb).
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6. DFID’s multilateral expenditure in 2005/06 was channelled primarily
through three organisations; the EC received £917m (55 per cent), UN agencies
£299m (18 per cent) and World Bank
Group £272m (16per cent). Other recipients
are shown in Table 1(27 kb).
7. DFID’s Humanitarian assistance in 2005/06 totalled £550m. £411m of this was spent bilaterally and £140m was spent multilaterally via the EC and UN.
Trends in the DFID Aid Programme
8. The total DFID Programme has increased by 51 per cent since 2001/02. The
DFID bilateral programme has increased year on year over the past five years
(see figure 2). Expenditure on all aid types was higher in 2005/06 than in
2001/02 although the percentage share of each aid type has changed over
the same period. In particular, the proportion of technical co-operation
expenditure has fallen while the proportion spent on ‘grants and other
aid in kind’ has grown (see figure 3)In addition there have been
some changes in the types of aid instruments used within the broad categories of
expenditure - for example, increased use of grant for civil society
organisations (CSOs). More detail can be found in Table 1(27 kb).
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9. The main components of DFID’s multilateral expenditure increased year on year between 2001/02 and 2003/04 and then fell in 2004/05 (Figure 4). There were two reasons for the lower expenditure in 2004/05: attribution of the EC development budget for ten new EU member states moving from DFID to the Treasury in 2004/05 and a particularly large flow to the World Bank in 2003/04. The 2005/06 position represents an increase when compared with 2002/03.
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GPEX in 2005/06
10. In 2005/06 total GPEX was £6,612m (see Table 3(24 kb)). The DFID
bilateral aid programme made up over a third of this amount (38 per cent) and the DFID
multilateral programme accounted for a quarter (25 per cent). A third of GPEX is
attributed to non-DFID sources (Figure 5 and Table 3.1(24 kb)).
Figure 6 and Table 2(27 kb) shows that debt relief is the
major component of non-DFID aid, along with contributions from other UK
government departments.
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Trends in GPEX
11. Total GPEX has increased by 10 per cent or more in each of the last four years and in 2005/06 was 90 per cent higher than 2001/02. There was a particularly large increase in 2005/06 over the previous year of 27 per cent reflecting large amounts of debt relief to Nigeria of £1,135m and Iraq of £337m. Excluding debt relief, GPEX increased by 10 per cent between 2004/05 and 2005/06.
12. Figure 6 and Table 3.1(24 kb) show the percentage share of the various DFID and
non-DFID components of the UK’s GPEX for recent years. The percentage
shares of each component are broadly similar in previous years however this
changes in 2005/06. This change can be attributed to the large amount of debt
relief to Nigeria and Iraq.
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Trends in UK ODA Flows and Comparison Between the UK and other DAC Donors
13. Table 4(39 kb) shows what the UK has reported to the DAC in terms of the break
down of our aid into ODA, OOF (and prior to 2005, OA) in each of the last three
years. This also includes information on private flows from the UK to developing
countries1 . In 2005, total ODA amounted to £5,916m. This represented
0.47 per cent of the UK’s gross national income in that year. Tables 4.1
to 4.6 expands on Total Net Bilateral ODA reported in Tables 4, reporting on
destination country.
14. In 1970 the UN General Assembly endorsed a target that 0.7 per cent of the gross
national income (GNI) of donor countries should be given as ODA. Progress on
this indicator since 1970 is shown in Table 5(54 kb) and Figure 7. It can be seen that
the UK’s ODA/ GNI ratio increased in the 1970s, reaching a peak of 0.51
per cent in
1979. It then fell through the 1980s and remained around 0.30 per cent for the first
half of the 1990s before dipping further to reach a low of 0.24 per cent in 1999. Since
then the ODA/ GNI ratio has been on an upward trajectory. The UK Government is
now committed to reaching the UN target and has set a timetable for doing so.
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15. The UK’s ODA/ GNI ratio has risen to 0.47 per cent in 2005. The Government wishes to continue to raise UK ODA and expect to reach the UN target of 0.7 per cent by 2013.
16. Table 6(30 kb) and Figures 8 and 9 compare UK ODA figures and ODA/ GNI ratios
with those for other DAC donor countries. Some countries have already reached
the 0.7 per cent ODA/ GNI target (Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden),
while others are some way off (e.g the USA, Portugal and Greece). Despite
its relatively poor performance in terms of ODA/GNI ratios, the USA has the
largest total volume of ODA and many of the countries who have reached the 0.7
per cent
target, are among the smaller donors in terms of overall aid flows. The UK
ranked as the third largest donor overall in 2005.
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