The Commonwealth Ministers of Finance met on 21 September in Washington, D.C. to discuss aid effectiveness and their potential contribution to building international consensus ahead of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4), resulting in The Final Commonwealth Statement on Accelerating Development with More Effective Aid.

To accelerate progress towards commitments they made in Accra in 2008 (HLF-3) the ministers agreed to ‘collectively support the adoption of IATI or an IATI-compatible common standard to ensure that efforts on aid transparency have the maximum impact. Consequently we have agreed that our donor members will issue a timetable for the achievement of these common standards; and will ensure that our partner countries are supported in establishing information systems which reduce the fragmentation of existing aid information, better integrate aid information into budget systems and set out a clear set of rules and processes for the management and integration of aid information’

They also articulate the necessity of aid transparency for partner countries to deliver on aid effectiveness commitments: ‘Achieving a universally accepted standard is important for consistency. In this respect and to achieve more effective aid, Commonwealth partner countries have urged all donors to adopt IATI, to fast-track the implementation of key components needed to deliver on aid effectiveness commitments including publishing information on results, conditions, activity-level budgets and future flows: to explore how best to include non-ODA flows in IATI, including the rapid integration of climate finance into IATI; and to ensure that contractors employed by donors use IATI.’

This is a positive development for aid transparency from both a donor and recipient country perspective.

See the Final Commonwealth Statement on Accelerating Development with More Effective Aid.