Statistics on International Development 2006

Section 3

Contents | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5 | Table Index

Major recipients of UK aid | Bilateral DFID, GPEX and ODA flows  to individual countries and country groups | Expenditure in low income countries | Contributions to Multilateral Organisations | DFID expenditure through Civil Society

Where does the UK expenditure on International Development go?

1. This section shows the destination countries of bilateral aid, and for multilateral aid, the organisations to which flows are directed. It also reports on flows from the UK’s aid budget to Civil Society Organisations¹ (CSOs). The rationale for classifying assistance as bilateral or multilateral is explained in Section 1.

2. In this section, Tables 7 to 15 show aid flows to individual countries, regions and country groupings (e.g Commonwealth countries, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and low, middle and high income countries). Tables 14(50 kb) and 15(28 kb) also give details of multilateral expenditure as does Table 16(31 kb). Table 17(29 kb) shows UK flows to Civil Society Organisations. Some tables report DFID/ GPEX data and others ODA, as indicated by the table titles.

Major recipients of UK aid

3. Tables 7(26 kb), 8(27 kb) and 9(26 kb) highlight the top twenty recipient countries of DFID bilateral aid and UK ODA (the former is shown including and excluding humanitarian assistance² and Table 10(25 kb) shows the top ten recipients of DFID humanitarian assistance.

4. India continues to receive by far the greatest amount of DFID bilateral aid to an individual country (£253 million in 2005/06), with Bangladesh in second place (£123 million) and Sudan third (£117 million). In total, the top twenty recipients of DFID’s bilateral aid received 68% of the total bilateral programme (Table 7(26 kb)).

5. Looking at UK bilateral ODA, Nigeria, Iraq and India were the top three recipients in 2005; the first two countries received substantial sums of debt relief in this year, which explains their unusually high ranking (Table 8(27 kb)).

6. Sudan received by far the largest amount of DFID humanitarian assistance in 2005/06 (£98 million) (Table 10(25 kb)). Sudan ranked third in terms of its overall receipt of DFID bilateral aid, however excluding humanitarian assistance, it was not one of the top twenty recipients (Table 9(26 kb)).

7. Some major changes to country rankings in Table 10(25 kb) can be attributed to humanitarian assistance allocated in order to meet immediate relief needs following recent natural disasters. Pakistan became the third largest recipient of humanitarian assistance in 2005/06 as a result of the earthquake of October 2005. The UK also allocated £75m aid expenditure to the countries affected by the tsunami of December 2004. Most of the expenditure could not be allocated to individual countries and is classified as bilateral humanitarian aid to Asia region in Table 12

1. See glossary for definition.
2. Humanitarian assistance can generate particularly large flows in certain years in response to emergency situations, meaning that countries that are not usually major recipients of UK aid appear in the top twenty rankings. This explains the convention of reporting the lists both including and excluding humanitarian assistance.

Bilateral DFID, GPEX and ODA Flows to Individual Countries and Country Groups

8. Table 11(30 kb) summarises data on DFID bilateral expenditure and GPEX for regions and a range of country groupings (e.g commonwealth countries, HIPC countries and low, middle and high income countries). Table 12 expands on Table 11 and reports on the destination countries.

9. Figure 10 based on Table 11(32 kb) data shows that in 2005/06 45 per cent of DFID’s bilateral programme was spent in Africa, 38  per cent in Asia, 2 per cent in each of Europe and the Americas and less than 1 per cent in the Pacific. The remaining 13 per cent was not allocated to a particular region as it benefited all partner countries. DFID’s bilateral aid to all regions has increased over the last five years.

Expenditure in Low Income Countries

10. Table 13(24 kb) breaks down the DFID programme by the income group of the recipient countries and is used to report progress towards a DFID target to spend 90% of bilateral aid (excluding humanitarian assistance) in low income³ countries by 2006. In 2005/06 82 per cent of bilateral aid excluding humanitarian assistance was spent in low income countries.

11. Table 14(50 kb) shows how bilateral ODA from the UK and all DAC donors was split among different countries and regions in 2004 (the last year for which data are available for all columns in the table). This table also shows the total amount of multilateral ODA provided to each country and an estimated value for the UK’s share of this multilateral ODA.

12. Table 15(28 kb) compares the percentages of bilateral ODA given to low, middle and high income countries for all DAC donors and for multilateral agencies in 2004. It can be seen that the UK gave a considerably higher proportion of ODA (83 per cent) to low income countries than all DAC donors, with the exception of Ireland who gave 86 per cent. Six countries gave less than 50 per cent of their ODA to low income countries; Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain, and United States.

3. Income Groups are classified using 2004 GNI per capita thresholds (see glossary for details). The income group status of individual countries can be seen in Annex 1.

Contributions to Multilateral Organisations

13. Table 16(31 kb) shows DFID contributions to different multilateral organisations alongside contributions from other UK Government Departments. In 2005/06 DFID spent £1,674m through multilateral agencies with the greatest amounts being channelled through the EC, World Bank Group and UN agencies. DFID increased payments through UN agencies by £98m to £299m in 2005/2006. Almost half of this increase (£40m) can be attributed to the UK,s contribution to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). CERF is a new multi-donor humanitarian response fund launched in March 2006 and is administered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Total contributions in 2005/06 and 2004/05 were less than in 2003/04 due to lower payments to the World Bank Group– in particular to IDA (the World Bank’s concessional lending department). The change in the attribution of EC aid for new EU member states from DFID to the Treasury also reduced the level of DFID’s EC contributionsfrom 2004/05 (while increasing the level of those of ‘other government departments’).

14. There were small reductions in contributions to the Regional Development Banks as a group and Commonwealth agencies compared with the previous year.

DFID Expenditure through Civil Society Organisations

15. CSOs are non-governmental organisations which play a vital role in building global alliances in support of eliminating world poverty. Table 17(29 kb) sets out allocations in the last financial year to these agencies and the types of arrangements through which funds were given (terms are explained in the glossary).

16. In total funds disbursed through this channel increased slightly in 2005/06 (£261m) compared with 2004/05 (£233m). The British Red Cross was the single largest recipient of DFID funding (£52m), followed by VSO (£29m) and Oxfam (£21m). It should be noted that these funds appear as ‘grants and other aid in kind’ in Tables 1(27 kb) and 12(60 kb).⁴

4. Table 17 includes only expenditure for UK CSOs hence the figures are smaller than those shown in Table 1 which include expenditure through non-UK CSOs.

Income Groups

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