A big thanks to the team at the Luxembourg MFEA, who highlighted a change in the OECD DAC CRS reporting guidelines that have an impact on the IATI Standard.
Page 98 / Paragraph 409 of Converged Statistical Reporting Directives for the Creditor Reporting System (CRS) and the Annual DAC Questionnaire | Annex 23. Reporting methods for private sector instruments” (DCD/DAC/STAT(2023)9/FINAL) details the addition of codes for blended finance that can now be included:
- Concessional blended finance as a part of an associated finance packag
- Concessional blended finance, other
- Blended finance through leveraging instruments at project level
- Blended finance through funds and facilities
Luxembourg highlight that this relates to the IATI codelist CRS Additional Other Flags, which currently has:
- Free standing technical cooperation: Free standing technical cooperation (Col 24 in CRS++ Reporting format)
- Programme-based approach: Programme-based approach (Col 25 in CRS++ Reporting format)
- Investment project: Investment project (Col 26 in CRS++ Reporting format)
- Associated financing: Associated financing (Col 27 in CRS++ Reporting format)
In effect, the new change in the OECD DAC CRS reporting guidelines means that value 4 of the IATI CRS Additional Other Flags codelist now encompasses four values, i.e. the new values on blended finance, instead of one.
Community Feedback requested
The challenge - which we seek input from community members - is how to best reflect this in the IATI Standard. We think there are two options, and would very much welcome feedback from the community.
Option One: change & update the existing CRS Additional Fields codelist
The CRS Additional Other Flags codelist is "Non Embedded" in the IATI Standard, which means it can be updated without making a formal change to the wider Standard.
A route we could take is to update the codelist to incorporate the new possible values. The following list is suggested by Luxembourg MFEA:
- Concessional blended finance as a part of an associated finance package
- Concessional blended finance, other
- Blended finance through leveraging instruments at project level
- Blended finance through funds and facilities
- Freestanding technical cooperation
- Programme-based approach
- Investment project
Doing this would mean we could reflect this change without a formal update to the Standard.
This could be achieved relatively quickly, providing there is ample notice.
Option Two: Introduce a new attribute and codelist
An alternative route could be to propose the addition of a new, dedicated attribute ("type of blended finance") and associated codelist to the IATI Standard.
Doing this would require us to make a formal upgrade.
At present, there is no timetable set for this.
Thinking of impact: who is using this codelist?
We checked the publishers that currently use this field & codelist: Sweden, Slovakia and the EC. It would be great to hear from existing publishers and other CRS specialists, for thoughts about how to proceed.
Provide feedback by 31 December 2023
Please post your thoughts below by the end of December. After which the IATI Secretariat will review feedback and publish a recommended option on Connect.
Since there are currently only 2 publishers using these elements, I don't think this change would justify a full-blown decimal upgrade process. So, option 1 looks the most straightforward and practical way to approach this. Interesting would be to hear if other OECD/DAC donors plan to publish these additional in IATI data.
Thanks Herman van Loon
We also thought that. It'd be really helpful to get opinions from those that use this field whether the proposed codelist would be sufficient...
I agree that option 1 seems much simpler.
However, I'm puzzled about the new proposed codelist, as it's basically upside-down from the original one. This means that ALL activities currently coded based on the original codelist would have to be recoded. Why not change only #4, and leave the first 3 intact?
The result would be:
Thanks Yohanna Loucheur
Yes, I thought similar! Hopefully cooperation_lu can clarify...
Thanks
Thanks for your feedback!
We agree that the codes 1, 2 & 3 would remain the same and 4 would become 4, 5, 6 & 7:
1 Free standing technical cooperation
2 Programme-based approach
3 Investment project
4 Concessional blended finance as a part of an associated finance package
5 Concessional blended finance, other
6 Blended finance through leveraging instruments at project level
7 Blended finance through funds and facilities
Thanks cooperation_lu
So the change to the existing CRS Additional Other Flags would be:
Codes
.... remain the same
Code
.... would change to
And then the following new codes would be added.... :
Herman van Loon Yohanna Loucheur do think that looks reasonable / in line with the discussions?
Thanks
Dear cooperation_lu Yohanna Loucheur Herman van Loon as the only responders on this thread, I think the next step is to take this into a slightly more format proposal/notice, along with a preview of how the new codelist will look (including draft changes in the codelist repositories)
We can progress this - but just wanted to check for any last minute changes of additions from yourselves....
Note - as discussed, this would not be a decimal upgrade to the standard, but we would still want to ensure plenty of time and notice to all - given that it involves a change to an existing codelist (in line with the source list)
Thanks
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