Finland’s ODA to GNI ratio rises to 0.47% in 2020

Finland’s development cooperation expenditure in 2020 amounted to EUR 1,119 million, according to the preliminary data on development cooperation in 2020 released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday.

The amount represented 0.47 per cent of Finland’s gross national income (GNI). Last year, the total amount of the exclusive ODA budget item administered by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was EUR 708.4 million, said the foreign ministry in a press release referring to the OECD data.

In relation to 2019, Finland’s development cooperation expenditure rose in real terms by 8.1 per cent. With the GNI ratio at 0.42 per cent in 2019, Finland’s development cooperation expenditure was EUR 1,010 million. In 2019, the ODA administered by the foreign ministry was EUR 568.5 million.

One of the reasons for the rise in the ODA to GNI ratio was that based on the latest data, Finland’s GNI fell by about half a per cent in 2020.

The actual amount of ODA expenditure in 2020 grew by EUR 109 million compared to that in 2019. The biggest increases were seen in multilateral development cooperation and humanitarian assistance. Multilateral development cooperation grew by EUR 62 million compared to that in the previous year. Humanitarian assistance grew by EUR 35 million.

A major downward trend was visible in other than Finnfund’s development policy investments (EUR 20 million, which is EUR 76 million less than that in 2019) and in expenditure on refugee-related expenditure (EUR 52 million, which is EUR 28 million less than that in the year before).

A significant proportion of Finland’s development cooperation funding was provided through the EU (EUR 246 million) and other multilateral organisations, such as the UN (EUR 281 million) and the World Bank Group (EUR 96 million). In 2020, EUR 113 million was allocated for humanitarian assistance. In 2020, the main recipients of Finland’s bilateral development cooperation funding were Afghanistan (EUR 24 million), Somalia (EUR 23 million), Myanmar (EUR 22 million), Ethiopia (EUR 19 million) and Mozambique (EUR 16 million).

Globally, development cooperation flows in 2020 amounted to USD 161.2 billion (EUR 141.5 billion), which represented an increase of 3.5 per cent in real terms, compared to that in the previous year. The largest donors were the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and France. Of the OECD/DAC members, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom exceeded the 0.7 per cent target set by the UN. DAC members’ average ODA to GNI ratio was 0.32 per cent.