Achieving global prosperity through economic development has been at the heart of OECD’s work since its foundation. Development is an integral part of OECD’s mission to build a stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy.

The OECD works to foster development through aid with its Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the international reference on the quantity and quality of Official Development Assistance (ODA). In an increasingly interdependent global economy however, development requires a more comprehensive approach going beyond aid. Indeed, the OECD also works in many policy areas important for development, including agriculture, trade, investment, taxation and migration. This cross-cutting expertise and our mandate to foster comprehensive responses to complex global challenges, gives us at the OECD a special responsibility to ensure that these different policy areas work in a coherent manner to support development.

Recognising that policy coherence for development (PCD) is imperative to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, OECD countries adopted in June 2008 the OECD Ministerial Declaration on PCD. Today, in keeping with this Declaration, the OECD’s initiative on PCD explores ways of ensuring that government policies are supportive of developing countries’ development goals.

The PCD initiative has developed guidance on good institutional practices to support policy coherence. Drawing on the OECD’s experiences and lessons learned, it offers a new tool to help governments promote PCD at the national level. A key finding of this work is that well-designed institutional frameworks are fundamental to ensure that the development dimension is taken into account at all stages of policy-making, and to promote coherent, whole-of-government approaches to development.