Nevertheless the DAC was instrumental in putting the issue of aid co-ordination and harmonization on the global agenda.
The issue aid effectiveness became even more urgent when in the early 2000s international donors, whit the EU in a leading position, decided reverse the declining trends in the volume of aid while during the 1990s it looked as if foreign aid was withering away, after less than a decade DAC members had more than doubles the resources going to developing countries, increasing their combined budgets from US$52 billion in 2000 to almost $120 billion in 2008.
The number of actor –both public and private donors-providing foreign assistance had increased significantly.
For instance, it was calculated that, in 2006, there were about 225 bilateral donor agencies and 242 multilateral agencies working in development co-operation; to this we should add the so-called ‘emerging donors’ and the growing number of private donors, such as foundations and business corporations.
The proliferation of donors produced a system that often lacks coherence, in which “the combined effort adds up to less that the sum of list parts”