Romania today became the first Associate of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the leading international forum for bilateral providers of development co-operation. As a DAC Associate, Romania will contribute to the mandate of the DAC to promote development co-operation and contribute to sustainable development.
Associate status allows non-Members to participate in the full range of the DAC's work, with the same rights and obligations as OECD-DAC members, including decision-making (except decisions related to the accession of OECD Members to the DAC).
Romania has shown strong commitment to the DAC and to the DAC standards over the last years. Romania has been a Participant in the Committee since 2018 and has reported its development finance statistics to the OECD since 2008 and at activity level since 2015. Romania's official development assistance (ODA) stood at USD 539.1 million in 2024 (preliminary data) representing 0.16% of its gross national income (GNI). This was a decrease of 1.6% in real terms in volume and in the share of GNI from 2023.
Significant milestones in Romania's development co-operation system include the adoption of a law in 2016 providing the regulatory framework for international development co-operation and humanitarian assistance, and the creation of the Romanian development co-operation agency (RoAid), set up in 2016 and operational since 2017.
Romania's development co-operation policy aims to contribute to the eradication of extreme poverty by promoting security and prosperity through effective partnerships with partner countries, to support their own sustainable development goals, with a focus on its priority countries and territories in the extended Black Sea region, the Western Balkans, Africa and the Middle East. Romania's development co-operation activities are shaped by its own transformation from a recipient to a donor country and reflect the country's knowledge and experience, notably in terms of accession to the European Union, democratic transition processes, and education.
