If the ODA budget is to be cut, doing so will be painful, messy, and imperfect, but there is a way to wield the chisel well. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts a 12 percent decline of GDP in 2020 and the Institute for Fiscal Studies that it will take till 2023 to return to current levels; even if the 0.7 percent pledge is maintained, the aid portfolio is facing a substantial haircut.

Unlike Michaelangelo, the task is not to find David in the marble–the ODA portfolio was not perfect, will not become so, and cuts will involve sacrificing some things that make the world better.

But the current portfolio can be improved in its strategic coherence, by eliminating its least effective programmes and by diversifying the instruments it uses to increase its efficiency. A good process for selecting and structuring cuts can achieve this.

Even more important, this will improve the quality of ODA spending in perpetuity. This note sets out what this process should look like and suggests specific areas which should be cut or protected.

Paper by the Centre For Global Development