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AidData Tracking Development Finance

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AidData User's Guide

One of the key goals of AidData is to increase transparency in development finance. To that end, we've attempted to create the most compressive collection of detailed, standardized data on development finance activities to date. Our purpose is to provide scholars, policy makers, journalists, and citizens with a comprehensive tool to test hypotheses and understand trends in overall and purpose-specific development assistance, both across countries and over time. AidData contains data on commitments and disbursements for the period 1945-2009. The User's Guide describes the procedures used in the data collection, standardization, and categorizing of projects within AidData.

Introduction

The primary variables in AidData are compiled from a range of official sources, including the OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database, donor annual reports, project documents from both bilateral and multilateral aid agencies, and data gathered directly from donor agencies.

Additional variables have been created specifically by AidData in an effort to standardize traditionally problematic fields, including country names and commitment amounts. To enable future research, projects are in the process of being coded for primary purpose and multiple activities. In this release of the database, a subset of the data will have AidData activity codes available. Long-term plans include the application of the AidData coding scheme to all projects in AidData, regardless of source. For a complete description of the PLAID coding scheme, please see AidData's Development Activity Coding Scheme.

To help users already familiar with international standards easily interpret the information in AidData, all projects that have AidData primary purpose and activity codes also have an imputed CRS code.

We wish to thank all of our users for being willing to use and test AidData in this beta period. Your feedback and suggestions are critical to improving AidData and are greatly appreciated. Please submit feed back to info@aiddata.org.

Using This Guide

The User's Guide explains exactly what data is included in AidData, where the data came from, and how each of these sources were normalized so as to be directly comparable. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email the AidData team. Data questions should be directed to info@aiddata.org.

Wherever we present actual field names, they are formatted in mono-spaced font, e.g., field_name.

Reporting Errors in AidData

While we have taken significant care to ensure that this dataset is as error-free as possible, it is still a development release and we have not yet finished the data-vetting process. With over 1 million project rows in the dataset, there are certainly errors in AidData. Please report any errors – large or small – to info@aiddata.org with "[AidData ERROR]" in the subject line.

Types of Development Financing Tracked by AidData

AidData includes both commitment and disbursement2 amounts for development financing projects over the 1947-2009 period..3 We define development finance as loans or grants from governments, official government aid agencies, and inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) intended mainly to promote the economic development and welfare (broadly defined) of developing countries. This expands upon the traditional definition of “aid” as only including flows that fit the traditional definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA)..4 In addition to ODA, the PLAID database includes international loans at market rates if these loans are extended in an effort to foster economic or social development. Our data therefore includes commitments that offer financing to developing countries in the form of:

  • Grants
  • Mixed loans and grants
  • Loans at discretionary rates from multilateral agencies
  • Loans/loan guarantees at market rates
  • Technical assistance
  • Sector program aid transfers in cash or in kind

For many projects it is possible to restrict the data selection criteria within the database to differentiate among project financing types using either the flow_type or grant_element variables. For donors that do not explicitly state that a given commitment is a loan or a grant or both, we leave these fields blank.

The PLAID database includes neither project funding that originates from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) nor contributions from private investors, banks, or foundations..5 The database also does not include military aid from either bilateral or multilateral donors. The following is a list of the types of financing which PLAID does not currently include:

  • Military equipment and services
  • Military stock of debt
  • Aid flows from non-governmental organizations.6
  • Private long-term capital
  • Grants by private voluntary agencies
  • Loans made out of funds held in the recipient country
  • Foreign direct investment (FDI), unguaranteed bank lending, portfolio investment.

Importantly, we also do not include flows that constitute core funding for multilateral development organizations. Following the CRS reporting directives, we do include flows from donor governments to multilateral organizations provided that they are earmarked as “financing for specific projects.”.7

  1. As was the case with all previous iterations of the AidData dataset, it is still not possible to reliably match CRS records from one release of the CRS dataset to another. This is largely the result of donors failing to maintain what the OECD stipulates should be a stable and unique combination of key fields in CRS ONLINE: crsid, flowcode, donorcode, recipientcode, and year. With each subsequent release of the CRS data, however, the uniqueness and stability of these key fields appears to be improving.↩
  2. Information on disbursements is much less complete than those on commitments. In PLAID 1.9 the commitment field is populated 99.16 percent of the time, while the disbursement field is populated only 48.60 percent of the time.↩
  3. Although the vast majority of records (99.44 percent) fall between 1973 and 2009, data for some donors (such as the World Bank) begin much earlier.↩
  4. OECD defines ODA as “Grants or Loans to countries and territories on Part I of the DAC List of Aid Recipients (developing countries) which are: (a) undertaken by the official sector; (b) with promotion of economic development and welfare as the main objective; (c) at concessional financial terms [if a loan, having a Grant Element (q.v.) of at least 25 per cent]. In addition to financial flows, Technical Co-operation (q.v.) is included in aid. Grants, Loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. For the treatment of the forgiveness of Loans originally extended for military purposes, see Notes on Definitions and Measurement below. Transfer payments to private individuals (e.g. pensions, reparations or insurance payouts) are in general not counted.”↩
  5. The one possible exception to this is our data on the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). GAVI is a public private partnership between WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, a number of donor countries, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a number of health organizations and corporations. These records are now tracked by the CRS as ODA Grants and thus are included in PLAID 1.9.↩
  6. PLAID excludes projects that originate from NGOs. However, projects from bilateral and multilateral donors that are implemented by NGOs are included. Implementing agents, NGO or otherwise, are captured in the beneficiary field or may also be identified in the project description.↩
  7. Section A.I.9. of the 2007 CRS reporting directives: “DAC Members! reporting to the CRS covers their bilateral ODA only. Their multilateral aid i.e. contributions to the regular budgets of the multilateral institutions (also called core funding) is excluded. Financing of specific projects executed by multilateral institutions (“non-core funding”, also called (extra-budgetary funding) is classified as bilateral. These projects are reportable in the CRS.”↩