Donor countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) contributed aid flows totaling 129 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 to poor countries, the highest level ever, but the new figures showed some members failed to meet their previous commitments, the Paris-based agency said Wednesday.
The 2010 figure presented an increase of 6.5 percent over 2009 and amounted about 0.32 percent of the combined gross national income (GNI) of OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries, the advanced countries advisory agency said in a statement.
"As the OECD and the DAC celebrate their 50th anniversary this increase shows a continuing commitment to development and development co-operation ..." OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria was quoted as saying.
According to OECD data, in 2010, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan were the largest donors of official development assistance (ODA) in terms of volume. EU countries that are members of the DAC jointly provided 70.2 billion dollars, representing 54 percent of total net ODA provided by DAC donors.
In order to integrate poor countries better into global development, the United Nations has set rich countries' ODA target at 0.7 percent of one's GNI. OECD said Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have continued to exceed that UN target.
In 2005, the G8 committed at its Gleneagles Summit to more than double ODA to Africa with an additional 25 billion dollars per annum (in 2004 real terms) by 2010, however, according to OECD, some donors are not meeting targets they set at Gleneagles.
Recent OECD survey showed that most donors decelerated their aid increase. Official aid flowing in Africa is likely to rise by just 1 percent per year in real terms, remarkably slowed from the average 13 percent over the past three years. The OECD warned that "any additional aid to the African countries will be outpaced by population growth."
The OECD chief said how to make donors meet targets will be central discussion at the international meeting in Busan, South Korea, later in the year.