National statistics

Revisions statement

Updated 20 July 2021

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-on-international-development-final-uk-aid-spend-2019/revisions-statement

On 20 July 2021, Statistics on International Development (SID): Final Aid Spend 2019 publication was updated to take account of a set of revisions for 2017-2019 Official Development Assistance (ODA). As announced in the Provisional SID 2020 (published April 2021), these revisions are minor, and the trends reported in the SID: Final Aid Spend 2019 publication are unaffected.

The effect of these revisions has reduced UK ODA by £13 million in 2019 and by £7 million in 2017 and 2018. The revised figure for total UK ODA in 2019 is £15,184 million; the ODA:GNI ratio continues to be 0.70 per cent for all 3 years. All accompanying tables and Data Underlying the SID have been updated (revised years in the tables have been marked with an R). Please note that the Final SID 2019 narrative has not been adjusted. However, it is important to note that the trends remain the same. A list of all revisions affecting 2017-2019 are given below.

Summary of total UK ODA changes for 2017-2019

£ million

- Original ODA figure Revised ODA figure Adjusted by
2017 £14,059 £14,052 -£7
2018 £14,552 £14,545 -£7
2019 £15,197 £15,184 -£13

Revisions

  • the first revision is to account for double counting of a small amount of overseas platform costs[footnote 1] between government departments. Former-Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) implemented a new methodology for capturing ODA eligible administrative costs in 2017. The methodology document published at the time, specified that the UK Government platform would be captured as ODA by FCO and Department for International Development (DFID). However, the statistics team recently discovered that small amounts of these costs have also been included in government departments’ ODA figures

  • there have also been 2 revisions to the recipient country field following the discovery of data coding errors:

    • there has been a minor revision (+£0.5m) to former-FCO bilateral ODA total for China. This is due to the recipient country of one programme (GB-China Centre) changing from “Developing country, unspecified” to “China”. This means the revised total UK bilateral ODA to China figure for 2019 is £68,380 thousand. UK ODA to China to the nearest million remains at £68 million for 2019

    • there has been a revision to BBC World Service total for Central African Republic. This is due to the recipient country of one programme in 2018 and 2019 changing from “Central African Republic” to “Middle Africa, regional”. This means the revised UK bilateral ODA to Central African Republic for 2018 is £25,967 thousand and 2019 is £24,781 thousand

  • there have been a couple of minor changes to the types of aid in 2019 to C01 (project-type interventions) for the following programmes: RALON1 (Home Office), 113183-104 and 300668-101 (former-DFID); ECTIMH and HPSR_HSR (Department for Health & Social Care). This means the revised UK ODA total for 2019 project-type interventions is £4,764,151 thousand

These changes are in line with our revisions policy.

Please do contact us on statistics@fcdo.gov.uk if you have any questions regarding these revisions.

  1. Overseas platform are costs that the FCDO incur to provide office and residential properties overseas to Government partners (for example rents, utilities and maintenance). The government partners reimburse the FCDO for those costs. ↩

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