S. Korea provides $2.86b in ODA last year: OECD

South Korea provided $2.86 billion in official development assistance (ODA) last year, up 26.9 percent from a year earlier, marking the biggest increase since it joined the international aid forum of donor countries, data showed Tuesday.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD) released the tentative statistics on 29 member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), an OECD organization tasked with coordinating aid policy for developing countries.

Bilateral assistance accounted for 75.1 percent of South Korea's total provisions, or $2.15 billion, with the remaining $710 million being the ODA through multilateral channels, according to the data released by the Seoul government.

By region, Asia took up 47.3 percent, followed by Africa at

24.3 percent and Latin America at 9.6 percent. Most of South Korea's ODA was for social infrastructure related to health, education and transport. 

South Korea ranked 15th in the world in terms of the ODA size last year, up by one notch from the previous year. 

South Korea joined the DAC as the 24th member nation in 2010. (Yonhap)