Achievements
As already noted, the DAC is a forum for the major Western industrialised countries where they coordinate their aid efforts. One of the principal questions that emerged was how to ensure that its member states contributed equal shares of development aid. In the early 1960s, some member states contributed a significantly larger share of their GNP than others. To encourage that the aid effort was equally divided, DAC quickly recognized the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development recommendation on having an International Aid Target, proposed in 1964. The issue of the aid burden-sharing eventually lead to the first report on “Total Official Contributions as Per Cent of National Income” in 1967, something that was accompanied by closely negotiated explanations.
Another early question was what a donor could include when it reported its aid efforts to the committee. It was necessary to make the distinction between official transactions that were made with the main objective of promoting the economic and social development of developing countries, as opposed to other official flows (OOF) like military assistance. To that end, the committee adopted the concept of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 1969. The DAC revised the definition in 1972, which has remained unchanged since then, except for changes in the list of recipients for which it can be counted.
Read more about this topic: Development Assistance Committee
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