A Ranking of "Development Friendliness"

Published annually since 2003 by the Centre for Global Development, the Commitment to Development Index (CDI)2025 assesses rich countries and some middle-income countries according to how their policy decisions affect people in poorer countries. The CDI goes beyond the usual benchmarks such as development aid funding. It compares the "development friendliness" of a range of policy areas in different countries.

The CDI 2025 uses more than 40 indicators to rank each of the eight policy areas and the overall commitment of the selected countries to development. The three main categories – a) development financing, b) exchange and c) global public goods – comprise a total of eight further policy areas, namely a) quality and quantity of financing, b) investment, migration and trade, and c) environment, health, security and technology.

Countries achieve good results, for example, for generous and high-quality development financing, for transparent investment, low trade barriers for poor countries, and open and integration-friendly migration policies. Policy measures that improve global public goods also score highly. These include climate protection and biodiversity conservation, promoting global health through preventive measures, supporting technological research, and contributing to global security.

Thirty-eight countries were assessed for the CDI 2025, including eight middle-income countries. Sweden tops the overall ranking, followed by Germany and Norway. Finland and the United Kingdom occupy fourth and fifth place. Germany's good performance is also linked to its immigration policy, which the authors ranked first.

The bottom five places in the overall ranking are occupied by China, Indonesia, India, Mexico and Argentina. Among the OECD countries, Poland (27th) and the USA (28th) perform worst.

In a complex process, the researchers also compiled an income adjusted ranking of the 38 countries, in which Germany took first place, followed by Portugal and Sweden.

Overall, the CDI found that a majority of the countries surveyed spent less money on international development than in 2023. This finding was made even before some countries announced that they would be cutting their development budgets, in some cases very significantly. It is also striking that many countries reduced the share of their development funding allocated to multilateral organisations. On the other hand, there were improvements in other areas relevant to development. These include increased numbers of migrants and refugees being accepted and a reduction in per capita emissions in the majority of the 38 countries. However, subsidies for fossil fuels rose again. In the area of trade, the consequences of the Trump administration's tariff policy have not yet been assessed, but it is already clear that they are having a significant negative impact on low-income countries.

Twenty-eight of the 38 countries have also reduced environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies – but this does not apply to the EU countries and their common agricultural policy. Rising geopolitical tensions and conflicts are reflected in the key indicators for security. However, support for peacekeeping troops, for example, has been cut by half of the 38 countries. Arms exports, on the other hand, have increased.