Press release 04 April 2008
Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Preliminary development assistance statistics for 2007 - Swedish development assistance comfortably exceeds international commitments

The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) today published preliminary statistics for official development assistance (ODA) from all member countries. The statistics show that only Sweden and four other countries comfortably exceed the UN goal of an ODA volume amounting to 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI).

"Sweden comfortably exceeds the goal of an ODA volume amounting to 0.7 per cent of GNI and fulfils the commitments made at the 2002 Monterrey Conference," says Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson.

The figures for preliminary ODA volume in per cent of GNI are as follows: Norway - 0.95 per cent, Sweden - 0.93 per cent, Luxembourg - 0.90 per cent, Denmark - 0.81 per cent and the Netherlands - 0.81 per cent. The average level of ODA in DAC member countries is 0.45 per cent of GNI.

"It is worrying that total aid flows from DAC member countries have decreased. Even if ODA volumes to sub-Saharan Africa have increased slightly compared with last year, doubling aid to Africa in accordance with the commitments made at Gleneagles in 2005 remains a great challenge," Ms Carlsson continues. "It will require major efforts for us to jointly achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015."

The Swedish figure of 0.93 per cent can be misinterpreted as indicating a decrease compared with 2006 (1.02 per cent of GNI). However, there has been no decrease of development assistance. The preliminary Swedish figure for 2007 is primarily attributable to the fact that Sweden's GNI forecast for 2007 was revised upwards after the national budget was presented, and that the costs for the budgeted debt cancellations have not yet been reported to the DAC. The ODA reported to the DAC will exceed the budgeted development assistance framework the year in which the debt cancellations actually occur.