2012 Aid Transparency Index
4 October 2012 at 10:08 am
| Photo: army.mil |
An international advocacy organisation campaigning for aid transparency has rated Australia 18th on the global Transparency Index.
The Publish What You Fund’s 2012 Aid Transparency Index describes Australia as one of best improvers along with the European Commission’s DEVCO, achieving big jumps in the Index ranking.
The Index says donor transparency is on the rise globally but continues to fall short of best practice.
The UK Department for International Development and the World Bank became the first two organisations ever to receive a ‘good’ rating. Six organisations – including the Asian Development Bank – also rose in 2012 to join nine others in the ‘fair’ category.
The Index says that unfortunately, the ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’ groups still contain nearly half of all organisations surveyed – including some of the world’s most prominent donors, such as France and Switzerland.
The report urges donors to sign and implement the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which offers a global common standard for publishing aid information.
David Hall-Matthews, Director of Publish What You Fund, said: “There is too little readily available information about aid, which undermines the efforts of those who both give and receive it. Transparency is essential if aid is to truly deliver on its promise."
“That is why it is so disappointing to see that many of the world’s largest donors have not delivered on their promises. For aid to be fully transparent, donors must publish information to IATI. Only then can development activities be made truly effective, efficient and accountable”
The 16 top ranking organisations in the Index have all signed IATI, including the United States, represented in the top ten by the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
"And some of the biggest increases in scores can be attributed to donors, such as Australia, publishing information via IATI."
Produced annually, the Index ranks 72 aid organisations across 43 different indicators. Organisations range from traditional multilateral and bilateral donors to private foundations, climate finance and development finance institutions.
The Index says a combination of political will, pressure from civil society and technological progress has seen this year’s average score rise to 41 per cent – a modest 7 percentage point rise from 2011.
