Development assistance committee (DAC) members can count all direct support to ODA recipient countries to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and invest in recovery as official assistance. Examples include investments in partner countries’ health systems, testing of the population in these countries, treatment, vaccines and vaccination campaigns, as well as humanitarian response to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. The Secretariat issued a guidance for reporting donations of excess COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021 and 2022 ODA.
KEY GUIDANCE
i.
Rationale for counting excess vaccines as ODA
The longstanding DAC rules allow for aid in kind to be reported as ODA. Vaccines count as in kind.
ii.
Pricing methodology
To ensure consistency, transparency and comparability in ODA reporting, the OECD recommended that an average price of USD 6.66 per vaccine dose should be used in 2022 ODA (USD 6.72 in 2021 ODA), as determined by GAVI and aligned with the COVAX Facility.
iii.
Safeguards
Expired doses cannot be counted as ODA and donated doses are required to have a shelf life of a minimum six months upon arrival in-country.
For the sake of ODA integrity, members should verify the aggregate ODA figure reported for donations against their actual outlay in any given year and make a downward adjustment if needed, in order not to overstate their donations.
Donations can be recorded in ODA disbursements when the beneficiary country has taken delivery of doses. Pledges should not be reported in ODA
For more details about this guidance, contributions to specific facilities and cooperation with health research institutions, please refer to our Frequently asked questions.
ODA to COVID-19 response: based on 2022 preliminary data
