Originally published by Devex It has been a busy couple of years for the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, the body in charge of determining what can and cannot be counted as “aid” to poor countries, or official development assistance. Major changes to aid have already been made during a year-long process of modernization of the ODA rules, but the biggest change in decades is yet to come. This March, the DAC will decide on how to include what are known as private sector instruments in aid. This could mean a dramatic increase in the use of aid to invest in or give loans to private companies, or to agree to bail out failed private sector projects through guarantees. Without strong safeguards and transparency standards there is a real risk that aid could be used as a backdoor subsidy ...