Less than two weeks before development leaders meet in Mexico to review global progress in making aid more effective, a report has found that donors are not yet delivering on their promise to publish better information about aid.

Produced by the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC), the ‘Making Development Co-operation More Effective’ report measures how far donors have come in improving their aid effectiveness. It reviews progress at the half-way point between 2011, when the world’s biggest donors first committed to global development cooperation goals, and the 2015 target date for the Millennium Development Goals.

David Hall-Matthews, Director of Publish What You Fund, said:

“This is a timely wake-up call that more is needed for donors to fulfill their original commitments. All donors must accelerate their efforts to publish high quality aid data, which the report confirms is not yet happening.

“But the report does not go far enough in measuring donors’ aid transparency accurately. There’s not enough emphasis on donors publishing current activities, which partner countries have identified as being critical for their own planning, and which is a key element of the methodology behind our Aid Transparency Index (ATI).”

The report has been subject to a series of publication delays and does not include information on countries that scored low on their transparency commitments, raising concerns from campaigners that content has been watered-down. Publish What You Fund has further questioned the methodology used in the report to measure transparency.

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. Publish What You Fund is the not-for-profit global campaign for global aid transparency, which publishes an Index ranking donors according to their aid transparency efforts.
2. The Aid Transparency Index is the industry standard for measuring global aid transparency. As a fully independent assessment, it measures and compares donor progress in making their aid information open and accessible.
3. For more information please contact nicole@publishwhatyoufund.org or call +44 (0)2031 762 512.