Development financing has always been a key to international development policy. Since the 2002 UN conference “Financing for Development (FfD)” in Monterrey, the term development financing has been extended to encompass a plethora of topics, including public financing (e.g. public grants and loans) as well as private financing (e.g. direct investments, private loans, NGO funds and remittances). In addition, the debate on the mobilisation of domestic resources in partner countries – in particular fiscal revenues – has intensified over the last years. In light of international development goals and scarce public resources, the debate on development financing revolves around both the quantity and the effectiveness of specific instruments and financial flows.

At the third Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015 the  – based on the Monterrey Consensus  – was adopted in order to create a new framework for financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

With regard to development financing, ÖFSE focuses on both, following the discussion on the future of official financing for development as well as on analysing and documenting Austrian financial flows in international comparison.

In addition, various instruments for development financing (e.g. soft loans, development banks) are critically analysed and discussed in terms of their developmental effectiveness.