The OECD Development
Centre
41 Years at the Service of
Development and OECD
“ … to bring together the knowledge and experience
available in participating countries … to adapt it to the
actual needs of countries or regions in the process of
economic development and to place the results … at
the disposal of the countries concerned.”
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
The Development Centre was created as the result of
a US initiative made at a meeting of the Development
Advisory Group (DAG) in Tokyo in February 1961, a
year after the creation of the DAC. Its mission - to
synthesize knowledge and experience, to adapt it to
developing countries needs and to put it at the
disposal of those concerned - is still relevant today.
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DAC and DEV
OECD(60)13 and C(62)144 (Final):
A Partnership for Progress
DAC
Where major bilateral donors work together to increase
the effectiveness of their common efforts to support
sustainable development
Development Centre
Provides analytical support for development
policy making
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The Centre and DAC/DCD have co-operated from the
outset in many joint undertakings.
Each Unit recognises the complementarity of the other
in the shared aim of bringing social and economic
development to the poorer countries and helping to
bring about their full participation in the global
economy.
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The Centre’s Methods
1 - Forward-looking Policy Analysis
2 - Study of Long-Term Global Processes
3 - Capacity Building in Developing Countries
4 - Substantive Policy Dialogue
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The tools at our disposal, especially the experience and knowledge
available in the OECD, have equipped the Centre to approach
development questions through four ways.
 The Centre has been and remains able to undertake forwardlooking policy analysis.
 Lessons of the past are applied to the challenges of the future in
an effort to understand long-term global processes better.
 Knowledge and experience, however, are not solutions in
themselves without the capacity to use them effectively. Hence
the need to work with developing countries in sharing reform
and policy experiences.
 Finally, our work programme is not desk-based research. It is
more demand than supply driven. It is the outcome of a
substantive dialogue with our partners in both OECD and
developing countries.
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A History of Responding to
Changing Policy Needs
• 1962 -1972 : Putting Development on the Agenda
• 1973 -1982 : Bridging North & South
• 1983 -1992 : Addressing Interdependence &
Divergence
• 1993 -2002 : Promoting Reform in a Global
Economy
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In each period of its history, the Centre has been called upon to
respond to changing international circumstances and priorities.
As needs have evolved, so has the Centre’s own focus. Guided
by OECD’s priorities and equipped with the Organisation’s own
policy experience, the Centre has adapted its work programme
in order to meet the policy challenges encountered by
developing countries. Across the decades, priorities have shifted
from putting development on the agenda, to bridging NorthSouth cleavages, to addressing interdependence and
divergence and to promoting sustainable reforms in the global
economy.
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Highlights from the past
Forward looking policy analysis
• Industry and Trade in Some Developing Countries, Little, Scitovsky & Scott (1970)
• Project Appraisal and Planning for Developing Countries, Little & Mirrlees (1974)
• The Tying of Aid, Jepma (1991)
• Adjustment and Equity, Morrisson (1992)
• Towards Capital Account Convertibility, Fischer & Reisen (1992)
• Trade Liberalisation: What 's at Stake? Goldin & van der Mensbrugghe (1992)
• The World in 2020 (1997) & The Linkages Study (1995)
• The World Economy: a Millennial Perspective, Maddison (2001)
• African Economic Outlook (2002 - )
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One of the first products to put the Development Centre on the map was the work by Little,
Scitovsky and Scott 33 years ago. This innovative work, based on hard research in a
number of countries, was among the first to call into question the idea of import-substitutionled growth. It remains a standard text to this day
.
In 1992, three bodies of Centre work received particular attention. “Policy Brief N°5”, Agricultural
Trade Liberalisation: What’s at Stake, was a ground-breaking study of the implications of
agricultural trade liberalisation in the context of the Uruguay Round. It led to substantial
progress on the issue and was widely quoted in national parliaments and international
negotiations. Adjustment and Equity, took a dispassionate look at the effect of adjustment
policies in developing countries. Towards Capital-Account Convertibility, cautioned against
the hasty opening up of capital markets in developing countries that have weak
regulatorysystems. This was well in advance of the financial crises in the mid and late
1990s.
The World in 2020 and the Linkages studies were both undertaken for the OECD and have
formed the basis for ongoing OECD reflection about relationships with the developing world.
The phenomenal studies produced by Angus Maddison require no introduction. Both are
fundamental texts and OECD best sellers.
The African Economic Outlook, immediately established itself as an indispensable tool for
monitoring and understanding African economies. It serves a number of different publics. It
is a very useful instrument for statistical and economic policy capacity building in the
framework of the NEPAD initiative.
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Highlights from the past
Substantive Policy Dialogue
• Paris (1990): Africa Leadership Forum
• China, Colombia, Chile, India, Mexico (1990s): Explanation and Adaptation
of the GREEN Environmental Model
• South Africa (1993/94): Support for ANC Policy Design
• Côte d’Ivoire (1994): Reducing African Debt: Possible Application of a “Brady
Plan” to Africa
• India (1995): Economic Reform, Structural Adjustment and Competitiveness
• China (1995): Military Industries Conversion
• Brazil (1997): Fiscal Federalism
• Washington (1999): Fighting Corruption in Developing Countries and
Emerging Economies : the role of the private sector
• Paris (1989 – 2002): International Forums on Economic Perspectives with
the Regional Development Banks
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This is a list of some of the Development Centre’s contributions towards supporting
capacity building and reform in developing countries. Some highlights:

In advance of international conferences on climate change, the Centre devised a
model for measuring the effect of industrial policies on the environment and,
importantly, shared this knowledge with developing countries. The model –
known as “GREEN” – was then put freely at their disposal.

We provided direct advice to the incoming ANC authorities in South Africa,
helping them to devise policies that would help ensure stability and growth.

In India, the Centre helped to raise awareness policy advice to the government
and private-sector actors on how best to deal with and profit from economic
reform.

Our experts responded to invitations from China for help with their military
conversion policies, thus contributing to a smooth transition from armaments to
civilian production – 3 million workers were involved.

The Development Centre organised the 1999 meeting in Washington DC on
"Fighting Corruption…The Role of the Private Sector" in co-operation with
USAID and corporate partners (namely PricewaterhouseCoopers, CIPE and the
MacArthur Foundation). Transparency International was among 12 other
"Partner Organisations" involved in this meeting.

Finally, the series of International Forums on International Economic
Perspectives, which began in 1989, in partnership with the regional development
banks, has provided an opportunity for policy makers, business people,
journalists, academics and other specialists to meet and share their experience
of regional economic challenges.
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Today
Towards Inclusive Globalisation
• OECD’s Action Plan for a Shared Development Agenda
[PAC/COM/NEWS(2002)58]:
• Institutional restructuring for development
DEVELOPMENT
CENTRE
DCD
Development
Cluster
CCNM
SAHEL
AND WEST AFRICA
CLUB
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At the dawn of the 21st century, priorities and capabilities have
changed. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals,
promoting sustainable development and securing adequate and
effective financing for development have become shared
objectives. The Organisation’s new strategic priorities now place
development issues high on its policy agenda. The promotion of
inclusive globalisation has become one of its major targets. In
order to pursue these priorities effectively, the OECD has
undertaken a major restructuring of its development-related
activities.
The creation of the Development Cluster forms part of this overall
new approach. It is complemented by increased collaboration
between the Cluster Units and other Directorates and aims at
mainstreaming development concerns across OECD
Committees.
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Our Context
• Proliferation of development research
capacity in developing and OECD countries
• OECD Directorates: increasing work on
developing countries
• Enhanced OECD outreach to developing
countries (CCNM)
15
Establishing the Centre’s new priorities required taking
into account the following developments:
 Research capacity has increased in both developed
and developing countries over recent years.
 Across the House almost all Directorates have begun
to work more intensively on development issues.
 The Organisation has developed moreover a very
active outreach programme to developing countries,
coordinated by CCNM.
The Centre has had to reposition itself within the
Organisation, and to identify its value-added to its
stakeholders.
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2003: A New Centre
Institutional Changes
•
From Advisory Board to Governing Board
•
From President to Director
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The changes at the Centre have not been cosmetic. Now a unit in
OECD’s Development Cluster, it has been integrated fully into
the OECD. It has been restructured to resemble more an OECD
Directorate. It now has a Governing Board composed of
Member country Ambassadors. Unlike other committees,
however, non-OECD members can become full-members of the
Governing Board. Thus, today 24 countries, including India and
Chile, are Governing Board members.
Its integration has also meant that it is now managed by a
Director, appointed by the Secretary-General, rather than a
President elected by the Council. Thus restructuring has
implied that the Centre now services more effectively the OECD
in close collaboration with other units. It essentially functions as
a Part I programme, even though it is included under Part II.
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A New Thrust
Supporting the OECD’s strategic priorities
on development through substantive
dialogue, policy analysis and synthesis,
and capacity building in developing
countries.
↓
Deepening developing countries’
partnerships with the OECD
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Institutional restructuring is being complemented by the
ongoing reform to our work programme. The major
thrust of our work and activities is to support and, we
might venture to say, help shape the OECD’s
strategic priorities on development. We can do that
through engaging in relevant and topical policy
analysis, undertaking syntheses of research output to
support other Committees’ facilitating work,
substantive and informal dialogue on current,
forward- looking, or divisive policy issues and working
with experts and state and non state-actors in
developing countries to share experiences and learn
from each other.
In these ways we hope to contribute towards deepening
developing countries’ partnerships with the OECD
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2003-2004 Work Programme :
Adaptive Capacity and
Inclusive Development
1- Market Access, Capacity Building & Competitiveness
2-Finance and Governance for Development
3-Social Institutions and Partnerships
4-African Economic Outlook
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The Centre’s current work programme seeks to
advance this overriding objective. The topics chosen
reflect the priorities of the development community,
including donors and aid agencies, as well as the
expressed needs of developing countries
themselves. Moreover, the programme is an integral
part of the OECD’s own programme of work and is
executed in close collaboration with other
Directorates.
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Increased market access and raising supply-side capacities in developing countries are major
policy challenges today. For the poorer countries, capacity building is of particular
importance. The Centre’s analysis intends to clarify policy options both for the poor countries
themselves and for OECD members. We are working on these topics with DAC/DCD, ECH,
DAF, and ECO.
Having established the MDGs, the international community now has to deal with financing their
realisation. Clearly, “old” forms of financing will be inadequate. The Centre’s analysis looks
at the options available in the international financial system that can be drawn upon.
Attracting investment and private finance for developing countries, remains an abiding problem.
Equally, the contribution of those flows to development and poverty alleviation is a priority.
The Development Centre aims to evaluate the influence of governance issues on both sides
of the equation, leading to policy recommendations for OECD and developing countries on
how to overcome the governance deficit and enhance the development impact of
investment. This work is done with DCD, DAF and GOV.
The role of institutions is crucial in development. The Centre’s research looks at how much
poverty reduction and improved participation can be expected from supporting the
adaptation of existing institutions, often described as "traditional". Though we know that
public/private dialogue is key to improving public policy making, the difficulty is how to make
it work effectively in countries where public institutions are weak, the formal private sector
underdeveloped and disorganised, and where many civil society organisations are captured
by narrow private interests. Can we go beyond mere slogans when we talk about PPPs in
the poorest countries? We are working with DAC/DCD, GOV, SAH, BIAC and TUAC on
these topics.
The African Economic Outlook is one of the Centre’s – and the OECD’s – most successful
publications. The Centre and the African Development Bank launched the AEO project
having recognised a serious gap in our knowledge of African economies, especially in a
comparative sense. Supported by funding from the European Communities, the joint
Development Centre/AfDB AEO team is about to produce its third annual report. The value
of the AEO is many fold, but its contribution to the envisaged NEPAD peer review process
as well as to capacity building among the teams in Africa should be underlined.
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New Forms of
Communication
•
•
•
•
•
Policy Studies
Policy Briefs
Policy Insights
Working papers
Relaunched Newsletter
• Active Policy Analysis Networks
• Workshops and Expert Seminars
• Participation in Global and Regional Forums
• Informal Seminar Series
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New forms of communication are accompanying the changes in the
Development Centre’s role within the Organisation and in its
relationship with policy makers. To make our work more accessible to
policy makers and keep a wider public informed of what we are doing,
we are remodelling our publications and concentrating more intensively
on policy messages in both the Studies and the Briefs.
 A new series, called “Policy Insights”, will be of very short papers
available for downloading. Their purpose is to distil the policy message
of our work.

The Centre’s Newsletter has been revamped to give information about
the “life” of the Centre, but to do so in a thematic way we believe will be
more instructive for the readership.
 Informal Seminars and major events involving high-level experts and
political figures will continue. They are designed to harness knowledge
and experience to feed into our research and analysis, and provide an
arena for other parts of the Organisation to join in contemporary policy
debates.

All these products, with the exception of “Studies”, are available on our
internet site. The site is constantly undergoing improvement. It will
eventually become the major vector for dissemination.
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2003 Joint Events:
DCD/DAC/Development Centre
•
Aid Effectiveness and Selectivity: Integrating
Objectives Into Aid Allocations Experts' Seminar, Paris 10/03
•
Development Co-operation: Partnership and the Governance
of Aid Informal Seminar with the NGO network The Reality of Aid, Paris 27/05
•
Meeting of Informal Network of DAC Heads of Information
Multiple
Ottawa, 5-6/06
•
Land, Conflict and Development: What Role for Donors?
Experts' Seminar with USAID, Paris, 19-20/06
•
Trade Capacity Building and Private Sector Development in
Asia Regional Workshop, Phnom Penh, 2-3/12
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Over the past year, the Development Centre has worked closely
with DCD on policy coherence, aid effectiveness and selectivity,
land and conflict and most notably trade capacity building.
In fact, the OECD Policy Brief on Trade Capacity Building,
prepared for the Cancún meeting, was jointly written by DCD
and DEV; similarly the success of the recently-concluded
regional workshop in Phnom Penh is a mere example of the
synergies that can be generated. An important area of
collaboration is our joint work on and with non-governmental
actors, such as the NGOs of the Reality of Aid Network.
Finally, the Centre and the DAC/DCD have also been collaborating
on the issue of "Public Attitudes towards Development Cooperation in the DAC Member countries", steering jointly the
annual meetings of the Informal DAC Network of Heads of
Communication and Information (last one held in June 2003 in
Ottawa).
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Some Other Major 2003
Development Centre Events
•
Joachim Chissano, President of the Republic of Mozambique:
Private Investment, Partnership and Progress in Africa. Informal
Seminar, Paris, 04/04
•
Economic Development in Africa: Outlook and Strategies.
Conference with Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome, 28/05
•
The Coherence and Impact of Rich Countries’ Policies on
Developing Countries. Experts’ Seminar, Paris. Sponsored by the Governments of the
Netherlands and Sweden, 24/06
•
Development and Trade: Challenges and Priorities Participation of
representatives from Brazil, Chile, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Informal seminar, Paris, 24/11
•
Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Asia. Experts’ Seminar with the
Asian Development Bank, Paris, 26-27/11
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By no means are all major events organised by the Centre over the past
year (2003) mentioned here.
In April, President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, a major influence in
the NEPAD process, accepted the Centre’s invitation to come to the
OECD. In front of an audience of several officials from Delegations of
the Secretariat he discussed the role of partnerships in development
and his talk illustrated the benefits his own country has been able to
draw from such partnerships.
The Centre organised a round-table discussion last month immediately
after the Cancun meeting. Presentations by leading experts and trade
negotiators from Brazil, Chile, China, India, Mexico and South Africa
contributed to our understanding of trade–development interlinkages
and the range of developing countries’ priorities. The presence at the
round table of OECD Delegations and Directorates led to a frank and
almost unique policy dialogue and showed the benefits that the
Development Centre can bring to the OECD process.
Finally, the long tradition of joint meetings with the regional development
banks was continued in November with an experts’ meeting on foreign
direct investment in Asia in collaboration with the ADB. The role of FDI
and of FDI-trade-migration linkages were discussed extensively in the
context of Asian countries and their impact on poverty alleviation and
regional development were re-assessed.
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Looking ahead
The Objective
Coherence and effectiveness in policies for
development and poverty reduction
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Looking ahead, in order to advance the post-Monterrey agenda and
to promote development, we need to revisit the effectiveness
and coherence of policies. Effectiveness implies the
measurement of impacts. Coherence refers to the consistency
across policy objectives and across instruments and between
policy instruments and objectives. Trade, investment,
development assistance and migration policies of OECD and
developing countries interact with each other, producing
different, and occasionally countervailing, impact effects. It is
important therefore to understand both transmission
mechanisms and interactions across policies and to measure
their joint impact on poverty reduction and development.
We should think again on the role of modalities and partnerships in
achieving favourable outcomes and reassess the role of
domestic institutions, governance and policy in sustaining propoor growth.
Our challenge is to convince our stakeholders that a “holistic
approach” to policy making is a prerequisite for a “holistic
approach to development”.
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Concerted Action
• Cluster co-ordination
• Close collaboration with DCD
• Common priorities for development with other OECD
Directorates and Committees
• Active constituencies in the capitals
• A reinforced relationship with DAC high-level
representatives
And …
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Looking to the future, the Centre will be actively pursuing the goal of forging even
closer links with all Cluster Units and especially with DCD and the DAC. We all
worked together to produce a joint Cluster Strategy paper for consideration by
the Council. In it we suggested development priorities for 2005-2006 for your
consideration as well as the consideration of other OECD Committees.
Our list of co-operative activities is substantial; it will grow in the coming months and
years. Likewise, we are working to improve our participation and representation
in other relevant OECD Committees, to mainstream development priorities in
OECD policy deliberations and to promote this holistic approach to policy design
for development.
None of this will be easy. Some of it will be impossible if the Centre cannot establish
and maintain active constituencies in OECD capitals and a reinforced
relationship with our shareholders in Foreign or Finance Ministries. The very
nature of our work and the spread of our activities means that our major clients
are not identical with our shareholders, so we need a “filter” to disseminate our
work to interested parties and policy makers and to channel messages from
capitals back to us. We need to tune our work to the concerns of OECD member
countries, and to do that we need to know your major concerns regarding
development policy. We need your advice as to how to relate better to policy
makers in capitals. Would it make sense for our contact point in capitals to be
drawn from this audience?

This is an answer only you can supply and we would be grateful if you would
think about it.
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… a continuous
substantive exchange
with each of you
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These are our priorities. In the discussion that follows, I
would be very grateful if you would reflect upon how
you would like the OECD Development Centre to
better support your own priorities and activities.
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