Gleneagles Aid Commitments: What is the IMF Projecting?

In Tuesday's Financial Times, Alan Beattie pointed to the disturbing implications of recent OECD data on aid spending. Excluding once-off debt relief to Nigeria, aid to Africa stalled in 2006 and overall aid fell. Of course, these estimates look at the recent past. Perhaps the outlook will be better going forward? Unfortunately, the IMF does not seem to think so. In the CGD working paper, What Have IMF Programs With Low-Income Countries Assumed About Aid Flows?, Ben Elberger and I examined all IMF aid projections since the Gleneagles summit, when G-8 leaders pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010. We found that almost all countries in Africa are projected to have growth in aid receipts that falls well short of what would be needed to reach the Gleneagles goal. Only 2 out of 30 countries are projected to have aid increases sufficient to match that pace.

This isn't the IMF's fault and we should not shoot the messenger (so long as the IMF is careful to make clear that it is projecting what aid levels are likely to be, not what they should be). But the IMF could be more transparent about what it is assuming about overall aid flows. Using its 3-year projections, the IMF could add up and publish on a regular basis what all of its country programs assume about aid. Unlike the OECD's numbers, this would be a forward-looking exercise, so it would give advance notice when donors' actions are not matching their rhetoric. The IMF already has the information so why not?