ABSTRACT
The OPEC Fund for International Development is one of seven inter-governmental development finance institutions1 created exclusively by developing countries and financed to a substantial extent, and in one case exclusively, by four states in the Arabian peninsula.2 The latter states have come, since 1973, to lead the aid-giving process on the world scene in terms of the proportion of their official development assistance to their gross national product, as reported annually by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development3 The largest among these states, Saudi Arabia, became in 1981 the world’s largest donor in absolute terms according to the same source.4
