And while a majority of DAC members increased their aid in 2000, overall ODA slipped back to 0.22 percent of GNI, the same as in 1997. Much of the aid from rich countries does not go to the poorest countries in the world. So many DAC members have undertaken to provide 0.15 percent of their GNI to the 48 countries considered by the United Nations to be least developed. Throughout the 1990s aid to the least developed countries fell well short of this goal. Open markets Aid must be accompanied by coherent policies on trade, investment, shared technologies, the environment, and human capital.
Trade is a fundamental concern.
Over the last decade, trade barriers have begun to come down, and trade has expanded. Trade lowers costs and creates new markets for the products of developing countries. Increasingly developing countries are exporting manufactured goods to high income economies. At the same time, high income economies are exporting more manufactured goods to developing countries. Between 1990 and 1999, the trade grew fastest in the dynamic economies of East Asia.