OECD Data

DEFINITIONS

OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA)

Grants or loans to countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients (developing countries) and to multilateral agencies which are: (a) undertaken by the official sector; (b) with promotion of economic development and welfare as the main objective; (c) at concessional financial terms (if a loan, having a grant element of at least 25 per cent). In addition to financial flows, technical co-operation is included in aid. Grants, loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. Transfer payments to private individuals (e.g. pensions, reparations or insurance payouts) are in general not counted.

GRANT ELEMENT
Reflects the financial terms of a commitment: interest rate, maturity and grace period (interval to first repayment of capital). It measures the concessionality of a loan, expressed as the percentage by which the present value of the expected stream of repayments falls short of the repayments that would have been generated at a given reference rate of interest. The reference rate is 10% in DAC statistics. This rate was selected as a proxy for the marginal efficiency of the domestic investment, i.e. as an indication of the opportunity cost to the donor of making the funds available. Thus, the grant element is nil for a loan carrying an interest rate of 10 percent; it is 100 per cent for a grant; and it lies between these two limits for a soft loan. If the face value of a loan is multiplied by its grant element, the result is referred to as the grant equivalent of that loan. (cf. Concessionality Level) (Note: the grant element concept is not applied to the market-based lending operations of the multilateral development banks.)

ODA RECEIPTS
Total ODA receipts to recipient countries includes bilateral ODA provided directly by a donor country and multilateral ODA, 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

MULTILATERAL OUTFLOWS
Aid activities financed from multilateral development institutions' regular budgets. Projects executed by multilateral organizations on behalf of donor countries are classified as bilateral flows, since it is the donor country that effectively controls the use of the funds.

DEBT REORGANISATION
(also Restructuring) 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.