SEOUL, The latest peer review by member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has given an overall positive assessment of South Korea’s official development assistance (ODA) policy, Seoul officials said Tuesday.
The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) evaluates the aid and development efforts of its 32 member countries through a “peer review” process, typically conducted every five to six years.
The latest report praised South Korea for steadily increasing its ODA budget, recognizing the country’s efforts to fulfill its responsibilities as a “global pivotal state” in the international community.
The DAC said that South Korea is at a critical juncture as it rapidly scales up its ODA and takes on more global responsibilities.
South Korea became the first country in the world to go from being an aid recipient to a donor country and joined the DAC in 2009, five decades after being devastated by the 1950-53 Korean War. This year, its official development assistan
ce reached a record high of 6.3 trillion won (US$4.7 billion), up 31 percent from a year earlier.
Still, South Korea ranked 15th among the 32 member states in terms of the size of its ODA budget in 2023. In terms of the ratio of the ODA budget to the country’s per capita gross national income (GNI), South Korea ranked the fourth lowest.
Park Ku-yeon, the first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said that the results of the peer review would serve as a crucial guide for future efforts to advance South Korea’s ODA policies.
The review also included several recommendations, suggesting that South Korea should increase the number of qualified staff working in development across government agencies, delegate more authority to partner country offices and enhance its risk appetite to expand private sector operations.
It is the third peer review report on South Korea from the DAC since Seoul joined the committee in 2010. The previous reports were published in 2012 and 2018.
Source: Yo
nhap News Agency
