2024 Aid Transparency Index is out: JICA jumped 31.9 points, categorized as ‘fair’

The Aid Transparency Index is the only independent measure of aid transparency among the world’s major development agencies. It is researched and produced by Publish What You Fund.

The average score across all organisations in 2024 was the highest recorded so far – this increase reflects incremental improvements in the quality, quantity and timeliness of aid data published by the 50 international aid organisations we assess. All but one of the organisations are publishing at least some data in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard – meaning it is open, standardised, comparable and machine readable. This has resulted in the lowest number of organisations ever scoring in the ‘very poor’ category.

Download the full report here.

The launching event of the 2024 Aid Transparency Index, on 16 July 2024, organised by the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings and Publish What You Fund, can also be seen here.

In 2024, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) jumped 31.9 points as it re-started its IATI publication following a hiatus in 2022.

The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Japan’s bilateral aid agency, delivers aid in the form of technical cooperation, official development assistance loans and grant aid in over 150 countries. It is also responsible for providing humanitarian aid under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. JICA is not an IATI member but first published IATI data in June 2014.

JICA’s score increased by nearly 32 points since the 2022 Index, moving it back into ‘fair’. JICA now ranks 37^th. The significant score increase came as a result of JICA re-starting regular IATI publication and improvements in the Performance and Finance and budgets components.

• Organisational planning and commitments: 13.1 / 15
• Finance and budgets: 10.4 / 25
• Project attributes: 10.9 / 20
• Joining-up development data: 11 / 20
• Performance: 9.4 / 20

Here’s several recommendations to JICA, according to 2024 Aid Transparency Index.

• JICA is under-performing comparatively in several areas including: project budgets, tenders, actual and planned dates, titles, and tied aid status.
• JICA could make gains in the Finance and budgets component by starting to publish disaggregated budgets, project budget documents, and disbursements and expenditures.
• JICA should look to disclose project conditions for activities or provide a statement where no conditions are included.
• JICA should start to publish project-level results across all its activities.
• JICA should aim to update its data published in the IATI Standard at least quarterly, if not on a monthly basis.