Cuts to the UK 2020 Aid Budget: What IATI Data Tells Us

This briefing sheds light on the first of these questions by analysing the data published to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) by UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). A subsequent briefing will analyse the breakdown of budgets assigned for 2021 and beyond.

The FCDO was created by the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID) in September 2020. However, the 2020 IATI data remains split into transactions related to programmes that were formerly DFID’s, and programmes that were formerly the FCO’s. For more information on this, see our Methodology.

The IATI data that is now available shows all spend[1] for 2020 from the former DFID and their revised budgets (retrospective and future) for the lifetime of all activities. This enables us to assess the impact of the first tranche of cuts that took place in 2020, adjusting spend to the reduction in GNI as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.