Volume and Territorial Distribution of the Czech Republic’s Official Development Assistance Flows to Least Developed Countries

Abstract

Official Development Assistance (ODA) is considered one of the most important external resources of finance that can contribute to sustainable development in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The Czech Republic, as an official donor country, should spend on ODA, with respect to the EU and national targets, at least 0.33% of its GNI by the year 2030. Eradication of poverty in the context of sustainable development belongs to the long-term priorities of the Czech foreign development cooperation, and thus the Czech Republic considers some LDCs, which population is more likely to live in extreme poverty, the priority partner countries. Paper evaluated fundamental trends of the Czech Republic’s ODA flows to LDCs; compared them with the trends identified for the collective flows of all DAC members and for the flows of its four selected members (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia). Identified trends of Czech ODA flows showed clearly that Czech Republic did not meet official commitments regarding the volume of ODA and that level of fragmentation of the ODA flows to LCDs was quite high when these trends were examined during the period 2000–2018. However, the Czech Republic’s development cooperation policy did not differ markedly from the policies of the other four ODA donors. Any significant differences were identified when the fundamental trends of Czech ODA flows were compared with those ones identified for Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on European Integration 2024

“…Fragmentation and proliferation of ODA are the most important and commonly addressed issues related to ODA quality and quantity. Too fragmented ODA is considered to hurt ODA effectiveness (Kovářová, 2021b). Fragmentation of ODA refers to the high numbers of donors with smaller shares in the project market (Knack and Rahman, 2004), while proliferation is associated with a large number of donors and projects (Kimura et al, 2007), or with donors allocating their ODA disbursements among a large portfolio of recipient countries (Acharya et al, 2004).…”

“…The CECs commonly cooperate in their development policies with countries located in Eastern Europe or Western Balkans, and they are less interested in cooperation with the least developed countries with a lack of external financial resources (Kovářová, 2021b). The ODA provided by the CECs seems to be fragmented in terms of its dispersion among countries they identify as being their ODA recipients.…”

“…For instance, the Development Cooperation Strategy of the Czech Republic for the period 2010-2017 acknowledged the negative effects of ODA fragmentation on its effectiveness. The Strategy was formulated to reduce the number of thematic priorities as well as the number of recipient countries (Kovářová, 2021b). The reduction of the number of partner countries is also a priority for Poland (see details in Table 3).…”

Country selection and aid allocation: A case of the Czech Republic

“…The egoistic reasons behind the Visegrad programmes may be also observed in the portfolio of supported countries: the main focus is on close East European countries where the V4 states hold their own interests (Jankowski, 2018;Opršal et al, 2020) because any instability in this region would result in increased migration to the Visegrad countries, decline of trade and investment, and increase of organised crime (Szent-Iványi, 2012). The least developed countries are, on the other hand, supported only to fulfil commitments to the international community and the development flows to these countries are inadequate to meet the set international goals (Kovářová, 2021). However, as mentioned by Chiel (2018), after the migration and economic crisis this region has been gaining more attention from the Visegrad Group as well.…”