This clarified previous conceptions of aid or development assistance; some grants and loans were now differently categorized as "other official flows (OOF)".
[7] Between 2016 and 2018 the rules were clarified for counting incidental developmental contributions by foreign military forces when deployed in underdeveloped countries for peace and security purposes.
[7] As of 2020, two major items remained as works in progress in the aid modernization agenda: the counting of aid provided through private sector instruments (PSIs), and the construction of a system for measuring broader contributions to global public goods in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The latter type of aid is expected to be recorded as Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD), and will be a separate category from ODA.
It was formalised on 24 October 1970, when the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which included the goal that "Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7% of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the Decade [by 1975].
The USA - the donor with the largest economy - spent more than 0.5% of its GNI on ODA prior to 1966, but this proportion gradually dropped, reaching a low point of 0.1% in the late 1990s, and standing at 0.15% in 2019.
China, Indonesia and Thailand were negative recipients: their repayments of past ODA loans were higher than their new receipts.
According to estimates that the OECD made in 2014, 28 countries with an aggregate population of around 2 billion people will cease to be ODA eligible by 2030.
[5] Targets have been set to reduce tying: for example in the 2005 Paris Declaration[18] and the DAC's "Recommendation" on untying, first agreed in 1998 and subsequently maintained in revised forms.
The report pointed out that most DAC members failed to use a public bulletin board to advertise contract tenders.
In 2019 five DAC members declared giving more than half of their ODA in the form of tied aid (Greece 100%, Hungary 78%, Poland 75%, Slovenia 74%, Austria 55%).
(The United States, however, was one of the few DAC countries that systematically posted open tenders for its untied aid on a public bulletin board.
)[20] ODA is widely acknowledged to be an untidy and somewhat arbitrary category of aid, its definition having been agreed by the DAC members only with difficulty and awkward compromises.
For example, some stakeholders are particularly interested in progress toward economic convergence of rich and poor countries, and for this purpose the inclusion of humanitarian aid within ODA can seem an interference.
Some DAC members considered this method "did not reflect actual efforts by donor countries"[25] (perhaps particularly when looking at an individual year).
When this agreement was reached, in 2020, it was criticized by commentators as producing a situation in which risky loans, subsequently defaulted, could count for as much ODA as simply giving a grant for the whole amount, yet cost less to the donor if some of the repayments have been made.
[26][27] Recognizing that ODA does not capture all the expenditures that promote development, the International TOSSD Task Force started establishing a wider statistical framework called TOSSD (Total Official Support for Sustainable Development) that would count spending on "international public goods".
The TOSSD data for 2020 shows more than US$355 billion disbursed to support for sustainable development, from almost 100 provider countries and institutions.
[28] The Commitment to Development Index is an alternative measure that ranks the largest donors on a broad range of their "development friendly" policies, including: the quality of aid (for instance by giving countries fewer points for tied aid), and considering country policies on issues such as trade, migration and international security.
Several of the Sustainable Development Goals (to be achieved by 2030 at a global level) include ODA in their targets and indicators.