Hungary joins the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) | WPN World People News

Hungary has become the 30th member of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the leading international forum for bilateral providers of development co-operation.

István Mikola, State Secretary for Security Policy
and International Cooperation at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of Hungary and Charlotte Petri Gornitzka,
Chair of the OECD DAC.

Hungary’s accession to the DAC comes after a period of change in Hungary’s development co-operation system and a rapid expansion in its development activities, notably growth of official development assistance (ODA) which reached USD 156 million in 2015.

Hungary’s bilateral assistance is concentrated in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe, as well as in several low-income countries including Ethiopia, Kenya and Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Hungary’s projects focus on building democratic institutions and a market economy, as well as on promoting social, economic and infrastructure development. Hungary’s multilateral assistance is mainly channelled through the European Union.

Hungary has been a member of the OECD since 1996. Its accession to the DAC brings another OECD member into the committee and follows the accession of five countries to the DAC in 2013 (Iceland, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. The OECD’s goal is for all OECD countries, present and future, to become DAC members.

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development