Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

commitment is a firm written obligation by a government or official agency, backed by the appropriation or availability of the necessary funds, to provide resources of a specified amount under specified financial terms and conditions and for specified purposes for the benefit of a recipient country or a multilateral agency. Members unable to comply with this definition should explain the definition that they use. -- Commitments are considered to be made at the date a loan or grant agreement is signed or the obligation is otherwise made known to the recipient (e.g. in the case of budgetary allocations to overseas territories, the final vote of the budget should be taken as the date of commitment). For certain special expenditures, e.g. emergency aid, the date of disbursement may be taken as the date of commitment. -- Bilateral commitments comprise new commitments and additions to earlier commitments, excluding any commitments cancelled during the same year. Cancellations and reductions in the year reported on of commitments made in earlier years are reported in the CRS, but not in the DAC questionnaire. -- In contrast to bilateral commitments, commitments of capital subscriptions, grants and loans to multilateral agencies should show the sum of amounts which are expected to be disbursed before the end of the next year and amounts disbursed in the year reported on but not previously reported as a commitment. For capital subscriptions in the form of notes payable at sight, enter the expected amount of deposits of such notes as the amount committed.

Destination of Official Development Assistance Disbursements. Geographical breakdown by donor, recipient and for some types of aid (e.g. grant, loan, technical co-operation) on a disbursement basis (i.e. actual expenditures). The data cover flows from bilateral and multilateral donors which focus on flows from DAC member countries and the EU Institutions.

The objective of the CRS Aid Activity database is to provide a set of readily available basic data that enables analysis on where aid goes, what purposes it serves and what policies it aims to implement, on a comparable basis for all DAC members. Data are collected on individual projects and programmes. Focus is on financial data but some descriptive information is also made available.

Bilateral ODA commitments by purpose. Data cover the years 2005 to 2009. Amounts are expressed in USD million. The sectoral distribution of bilateral ODA commitments refers to the economic sector of destination (i.e. the specific area of the recipient's economic or social structure whose development is, or is intended to be fostered by the aid), rather than to the type of goods or services provided. These are aggregates of individual projects notified under the Creditor Reporting System, supplemented by reporting on the sectoral distribution of technical co-operation, and on actual disbursements of food and emergency aid.

Other official flows are official sector transactions which do not meet the ODA criteria, e.g.: i.) Grants to developing countries for representational or essentially commercial purposes; ii.) Official bilateral transactions intended to promote development but having a grant element of less than 25 per cent; iii.) Official bilateral transactions, whatever their grant element, that are primarily export-facilitating in purpose. This category includes by definition export credits extended directly to an aid recipient by an official agency or institution ("official direct export credits"); iv.) The net acquisition by governments and central monetary institutions of securities issued by multilateral development banks at market terms; v.) Subsidies (grants) to the private sector to soften its credits to developing countries [see Annex 3, paragraph A3.5.iv)b)]; vi.) Funds in support of private investment.

Total Receipts, Net: in addition to Official Development Assistance, this heading includes in particular: other official bilateral transactions which are not concessional or which, even though they have concessional elements, are primarily trade facilitating in character (i.e., "Other Official Flows''); changes in bilateral long-term assets of the private non-monetary and monetary sectors, in particular guaranteed export credits, private direct investment, portfolio investment and, to the extent they are not covered in the preceding headings, loans by private banks. Flows from the multilateral sector which are not classified as concessional are also included here.