Changes to Official Development Assistance

As the graph below shows, Luxembourg’s offi­cial devel­op­ment assis­tance ini­tial­ly grew slow­ly but steadily.

At the Earth Sum­mit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, Prime Min­is­ter Jacques San­ter for­mal­ly announced Luxembourg’s desire ​“to pro­vide 0.7% of GNI by 2000”. This objec­tive was then con­firmed and in 1999, dur­ing the for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment con­tri­bu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly, it was decid­ed to set the rate of 0.7% as an objec­tive to be reached by 2000, then to increase this aid ​“with a view to reach­ing 1% at the end of this government’s term”.

The tar­get of 0.7% of GNI was achieved as planned in 2000 and that com­mit­ment was con­firmed in sub­se­quent years, with ODA nev­er falling below that thresh­old. In 2009, Luxembourg’s offi­cial aid exceed­ed the thresh­old of 1% of GNI for the first time.

This objec­tive is still cur­rent, although in some years the ODA/GNI ratio has var­ied slight­ly at close to 1% due to reassess­ments of GNI dur­ing the year.