News from 2020-06-24 / KfW Development Bank
Now ranked “Good” instead of “Fair” – KfW Development Bank improves transparency ranking
In the recently published Aid Transparency Index (ATI), KfW Development Bank improved significantly by almost 20 points to a total of 77.3 points, moving up to the “Good” category. In terms of transparency, it therefore ranks 14th out of 47 among the world’s most important development cooperation financing organisations, which the Index has assessed this year in greater detail, and in the last ranking (2018), it was still in 22nd place in the “Fair” category.
Every two years, the NGO Publish What You Fund (PWYF) conducts a detailed review and evaluation of the quality and scope of donor data on development cooperation published under the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). This year it has seen a significant overall improvement in donor transparency.
Through the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), KfW Development Bank also provides data to IATI on all its BMZ projects that have been contractually agreed since 1 January 2013 or were already underway at that time. Together with the Ministry, work is ongoing to continuously improve data quality and the scope of reporting. At project level, the data set includes not only basic information such as title, short description, amount, business partner and status of a measure, but now also data on the current disbursement status, planning data, sector codes, links to country strategies, project pages on the Internet and evaluation reports. 2020_ATI_individual-graphic_KfW
For some new features – such as the link to tender and award information on the GTAI (Germany Trade & Invest) website – the technical and procedural prerequisites had first to be met, so that the pool of available data is now gradually growing. In future, information on SDGs and on the environmental and social compatibility of projects will also be published to this effect and will be part of IATI reporting.
The global situation caused by COVID-19 currently shows us very clearly how important it is for different stakeholders to work together and coordinate their activities. With regard to developing countries, international aid will play an important role in responding to the crisis, not only to strengthen public health, but also to mitigate the economic consequences for the population. Another challenge in this context is to use the billions pledged as wisely and efficiently as possible. Transparency can make a significant contribution here.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative was launched in 2008 during the High Level Meeting on Aid Effectiveness in Accra; Germany was one of the founding members. It is a voluntary initiative to improve the transparency of aid, development and humanitarian resources that enable information on aid and development activities to be shared in an open, standardised format. The number of organisations committed to IATI has grown steadily since its inception and now includes more than 1,000 donors and implementing agencies worldwide, publishing data on one million development projects and humanitarian activities.
The Publish What You Fund’s Aid Transparency Index has been assessing the transparency of the most important donors in development cooperation since 2011. The 2020 Index is the seventh complete index report. Data was collected between December 2019 and April 2020 and focused on 35 indicators grouped into five components: finances and budgets, consolidation of development data, organisational planning and commitments, project attributes and performance. The index groups donors into five categories (“Very good", “Good”, “Fair”, “Bad” and “Very bad”) based on their overall score.
