Finance For International Development Update

This note presents estimates of Finance for International Development (FID) in 2018. FID is a grant equivalent measure of cross-border, concessional finance publicly provided for development. We introduced FID last year to better compare development finance provided by both DAC (OECD Development Assistance Committee) and non-DAC countries, the latter having gained importance as development actors in recent decades. We produced estimates of FID for 40 of the world’s major economies, which accounted for around 90 percent of global GDP in 2018. FID attempts to measure all cross-border assistance given for the purpose of development—including grants, technical assistance, and the grant equivalent of all concessional loans and contributions to multilateral organisations—but excludes various in-donor costs (such as spending on scholarships) that are part of the DAC’s own measure of development assistance, official development assistance (ODA).