Show money flows with developing countries as a net total that includes repayments and profits sent home, not just aid
Steps to make it happen
- Rich countries list the money they send to poor countries, sorted by type.
- They also list the money that flows out of poor countries to rich countries.
- The list counts loan repayments, interest, and profits that companies take home.
- Money in and money out are subtracted to show the real flow in one table.
- Countries that receive help check the table and write comments where they disagree.
- The finished table is made public every year so that anyone can see it.
- Talking about cooperation in terms of what is left after subtracting, not how much was given, becomes normal.
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The proposal in detail
This proposal creates a system for reporting development cooperation in a common format that shows not only the amount of aid a supporting country gave, but also the net total of all the money moving between it and the partner country. The table would include public aid such as grants and low-interest loans, as well as public loans at ordinary interest rates, the principal and interest the partner country pays back, profits that foreign companies earn locally and send home, tax revenue the partner country could not collect because of tax breaks, estimates of money that leaves illegally, and money sent home by workers who have gone abroad to work. Items that are counted as aid but are in fact spent inside the supporting country are shown separately. Examples are aid that requires the partner to place orders with the giver's own companies, costs spent inside the giver's own country, and debt cancellations that exist only on paper. A table is made for each supporting country and each partner country, and it is prepared under common rules by an international statistics body or a group of independent experts. The partner country's government and researchers check the figures and can add a different view if they have one. For items that depend on estimates, a rating shows how reliable each figure is. To protect secrets, deals by individual companies are shown only as totals, with no names. The table does not replace targets for the amount of aid. It is meant as a supporting measure shown alongside them.
BenefitsThe real picture of cooperation becomes visible, and talks get a shared base
When the flow of money can be seen in a single table, both the giving side and the receiving side can talk from the same numbers. If repayments and profits flowing out are bigger than the increased aid, people can see that changing the terms of debt or the tax rules works better than competing over how much aid is given. On the other hand, if there are areas where less money flows out than people think, this helps reduce criticism that has no basis. When the costs of aid that are spent inside the supporting country are shown separately, the gap between the amount that looks big on paper and the amount that actually reaches the partner country becomes clear, and taxpayers in the supporting country can more easily check how their money is used. Because the receiving country can check the figures and write in its views, the receiving side's view is added to cooperation that until now has been told only through the giver's books. Looking at aid, debt, trade, and investment, which are separate fields, through one lens also makes it easier to notice where policies that were handled separately contradict each other.
DrawbacksNumbers based on estimates may cause misunderstanding and conflict
What people who oppose the idea worry about most is that putting numbers that include uncertain estimates into a single table could spread a false impression. Illegal money flows and losses from tax breaks are hard to measure accurately to begin with, and the amounts change greatly depending on the assumptions used. If only the figure showing that money is flowing out on net is picked out, it could be used for a simple story that rich countries are taking from poor ones, and support for aid itself could weaken inside the supporting country. Also, some argue that sending home company profits and repaying loans are also results of investments and loans that actually helped, so it is not fair to treat all outgoing money as a loss. Making the table requires information from many countries and companies, which would be a heavy burden for countries with weak statistics systems. There is also a worry that negotiations over how to count could become a political fight, and improving the substance of the support itself, which matters most, would be put off.
Learn the background
For a long time, the results of development cooperation have been described by how much aid the supporting country gave. But aid is not the only money that moves between poor and rich countries. Researchers and citizens' groups have repeatedly pointed out that when loan repayments and interest, profits that foreign companies take home, and money lost through tax avoidance and similar means are added up, as much money may be leaving as comes in as aid, and in some cases more. On the other hand, such calculations contain many estimates, and the conclusions change greatly depending on how things are counted, so the debate goes on without the two sides meeting. Also, the amounts reported as aid sometimes include costs that are actually spent inside the supporting country and items that are only bookkeeping entries, and this adds to distrust on the receiving side. Aid, debt, trade, and investment are handled by separate offices, and no one can see the whole picture in one place. This is one of the main reasons that discussions about the gap between rich and poor countries talk past each other.
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-15d) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes