Development Assistance Committee

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is a forum to discuss issues surrounding aid, development and poverty reduction in developing countries. It describes itself as being the "venue and voice" of the world's major donor countries.

The Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD), sometimes called the "Secretariat of the DAC", is the OECD Directorate within which the DAC operates.

There are 30 members of DAC, including the European Union which acts as a full member of the committee. OECD countries which are not yet formal members of the DAC -- Chile, Estonia, Israel, Latvia, Mexico, and Turkey -- participate fully in DAC meetings. The World Bank, the IMF, UNDP, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank participate as observers.

The Council of the OECD accepted decision to award Kazakhstan the status of ‘invitee' at the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

Known at first as the Development Assistance Group (DAG), the committee was set up on 13 January 1960 under the auspices of the OECD's forerunner, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). Its first meeting took place in Washington, D.C. (U.S.A.) on 9–11 March 1960, chaired by ambassador Ortona, Italy. A primary concern of the DAG, addressed at its second (July 1960) and third (October 1960) meetings, was to achieve accurate and comparable data reporting by its members on their aid flows to developing countries. In March 1961, the OEEC published the first comprehensive survey of The Flow of Financial Resources to Countries in Course of Economic Development, 1956-59. This was followed by annual reports until 1964.

On 23 July 1961 a Ministerial Resolution decreed that upon the supersession of the OEEC by the OECD, the DAG would become the DAC, and these changes came about in September 1961. The resolution also spelled out the DAC's mandate in five points, the first of which read:

The Committee will continue to consult on the methods for making national resources available for assisting countries and areas in the process of economic development and for expanding and improving the flow of long-term funds and other development assistance to them.

The origins of the so-called "DAC Secretariat" or DCD are as follows. A Development Department (DD), under the direction of Assistant Secretary-General Luciano Giretti of Italy was established within the OECD Secretariat in 1961. It consisted of two branches, a Technical Co-operation Branch and a Development Financial Branch. The latter became the Development Assistance Directorate (DAD) in 1969 and then the Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) in 1975.

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