IEG Fast Track Brief
32 items available
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Fast Track Briefs inform the World Bank Group (WBG) managers and staff about new evaluation findings and recommendations.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Mozambique Country Program Evaluation, 2001-08
(Washington, DC, 2010-05)During the period FY01-08, the World Bank was Mozambique's largest development partner, providing over $1.3 billion in International Development Association (IDA) funds. The Bank's strategy, which was aligned with and sought to support the government's poverty reduction strategy, focused on three pillars: economic growth, including macroeconomic management, financial and private sector development, rural development, and infrastructure; poverty reduction and human development; and governance. The evaluation finds that the Bank's strategy for Mozambique and its program were relevant to the country's development needs. The Bank's program was generally aligned with those of other development partners that provide general budget support, especially after FY05. Harmonization of procedures with other development partners also progressed, although there is scope for further improvement. Going forward, Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) recommends that the Bank help Mozambique sustain high growth and re-shape its pattern to make additional gains in poverty reduction; give priority in analytic work to infrastructure, agricultural productivity, education quality, and HIV/AIDS; and support improvements in the efficiency of public expenditures. -
Publication
Poverty Reduction Support Credits : An Evaluation of World Bank Support
(Washington, DC, 2009-11)Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) were intended to help countries implement comprehensive, country-owned development strategies to promote growth, improve social conditions, and reduce poverty. PRSCs were intended to ease conditionality, make annual flows to recipient countries predictable and integrated with their budgets, strengthen domestic budget processes, provide a framework for donor harmonization, and focus on achieving results. In terms of process, PRSCs have worked well. Findings show that they incorporated many envisaged changes in design and implementation. These include stronger country ownership, eased conditionality, and a shift of focus towards public sector management and pro-poor service delivery. PRSCs balanced tensions between predictability and program credibility. Although PRSCs differed from preceding adjustment loans, development policy lending today has converged towards a similar design. PRSCs today are subject to the same guidelines as other Development Policy Loans (DPLs). Differences remain in practice in terms of the association with PRSPs, broad scope, programmatic nature, and country performance. The evaluation recommends either that PRSCs be phased out as a separate brand name or that these differences be clearly spelled out. -
Publication
World Bank Engagement at the State Level : The Cases of Brazil, India, Nigeria and Russia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-09)Beginning in the late 1990s, the World Bank significantly expanded its engagement at the state level in Brazil, India, Nigeria, and Russia. This pilot cross-country study reviews the selected cases of World Bank's lending and analytic work at the state level in those four large federated countries. In each case, state governments were the Bank's principal development partners. The study looks at the evolution of the four country strategies and the Bank's mode of engagement at the state level, in order to draw lessons from that experience both for the Bank and for its federal and state partners. State-level engagement posed several strategic and operational questions, among them which states to engage, the scope of engagement, and the modalities of engagement. The Bank set out its approach to selecting states in country strategy documents. The findings are worth highlighting. First, the study confirms the desirability of continued selective Bank lending in a few states. However, the poverty impact of those interventions could be enhanced by balancing states' propensity to reform and the concentration of poverty within them, giving greater weight to the needs of poorest states. Second, continued focus on public finance management as the core area appears sound, irrespective of whether engagement is confined to this area or serves as an entry point for broader engagement. And third, there is considerable scope for greater impact from analytic work, knowledge transfer, and expanded knowledge sharing not so much concepts and theories as practical experience of what works and what does not. -
Publication
Bangladesh Country Assistance Evaluation, 2001-08
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-07)Bangladesh is among the World Bank's largest International Development Association (IDA) eligible borrowers, with a country portfolio of 21 active projects and net commitment of $1.9 billion as of FY08. The Bank's strategy has been to support government efforts to improve governance as a cross-cutting goal, while also improving the investment climate and empowering the poor. IDA's strategy for Bangladesh and its program during the period 2001-08 were relevant to the country's development needs, including improving governance and promoting structural reforms in order to consolidate gains in macroeconomic performance, exports, education, and health, and improve the prospects for successful future development. Bank assistance during the FY01-08 period was delivered under the FY01 and FY06 Country Assistance Strategies (CASs) and the FY03 CAS progress report. These largely reflected the Bank's search for more effective support for Bangladesh's efforts to sustain and enhance development, even as success in increasing exports and workers' remittances reduced the country's dependence on foreign assistance, and as awareness increased that governance issues needed to be addressed more broadly. -
Publication
The World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment — An Evaluation
(Washington, DC, 2009-06)The World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) assess the conduciveness of a country's policy and institutional framework to poverty reduction, sustainable growth, and the effective use of development assistance. It plays an important role in the country performance ratings that have been used for allocating resources from the International Development Association (IDA) to eligible countries since 1980. This evaluation takes the premise that beyond informing IDA allocation, the CPIA is useful as a broad indicator of development effectiveness. It assesses the relevance of the content of the CPIA through a review of the economics literature. It also assesses the reliability of CPIA ratings in two ways-through comparing CPIA ratings with similar indicators, and through reviewing the CPIA ratings generation process. Based on these assessments, the evaluation derives recommendations for enhancing the CPIA. -
Publication
Uganda - Country Assistance Evaluation, 2001-07
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04)The World Bank (WB) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) programs in Uganda over 2001-07 were delivered under the FY01-03 the WB Country Assistance Strategy, the 2002-04 AfDB Country Strategy Paper, and the Uganda Joint Assistance Strategy. These strategies focused on promoting governance, growth, and human development, and were pursued through a net commitment of $2.1 billion by the International Development Association (FY01-07) and $732 million equivalent (2002-07) by the African Development Fund. The World Bank's assistance strategies showed strong client orientation and were aligned with Uganda's poverty reduction strategy. The programs were substantially effective in decentralization, public sector reform, growth and economic transformation, education, and water and sanitation. More could have been done to help counter the perception of increasing corruption, improve power supply, reduce transport costs, enhance agricultural productivity, and help with family planning and reproductive health. The AfDB's assistance was also relevant and aligned with the government's development goals. Its support substantially achieved its objectives for decentralization, public sector finance, growth and economic transformation, improved competitiveness, agriculture, and water and sanitation, as well as education and health. There were some shortcomings in the assistance provided for power and roads and in reducing corruption. The International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) main contribution has been in telecommunications, in addition to playing a substantial role in providing assistance for institutional and regulatory reforms in leasing and in supporting the supply response to these reforms. Limited impact was seen in small and medium enterprise (SME) access to finance, despite significant joint effort with the WB. -
Publication
Improving Municipal Management for Cities to Succeed
(Washington, DC, 2009-03)Cities now host half the world's population and provide 70 percent of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Managing them well is vital for development. The Bank has assisted nearly 3,000 municipalities worldwide over the past decade. This Bank assistance has helped strengthen the planning, finance and service provision dimensions of municipal management through 190 operations identified by Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) as municipal development projects (MDPs). Best results for municipalities came through stronger flows of revenues, better financial management, information systems and ability to manage procurement. Weaker results were found in monitoring and evaluation, operations and maintenance, private finance of services and lack of poverty focus. The purpose of this IEG special study is to illuminate the scale and scope of Bank support for municipal development and to draw specific lessons from the achievements and failures of a sample of individual projects. The study focuses on three dimensions of municipal management; planning, finance, and service provision. The planning dimension refers to the capacity of a municipality to forecast and oversee its own progress. It includes information systems, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), city planning, and investment strategies. The finance dimension refers to how a municipality manages the resources needed to provide services to its constituents. It covers financial management, own-resource mobilization, access to credit, and private funding. The service provision dimension refers to the capacity of a municipality to manage the services required by city residents and business people through the effective prioritization of investments, management of competitive procurement, and sustaining of services through operations and maintenance (O&M). -
Publication
Review of IDA Internal Controls : An Evaluation of Management’s Assessment and the IAD Review
(Washington, DC, 2009-01)International Development Association (IDA) stakeholders want to be assured that IDA complies with its articles and policies, and that the funds it provides for development purposes are used as intended and have measurable results. A key purpose of IDA's control system is to provide such assurance. Hence, the Board of Executive Directors requested a full evaluation of the system by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), through an assessment by IDA management and a review by the Internal Audit Department. The evaluation is the first of its kind not only for the Bank but also for all international financial organizations. In this sense the Bank and IDA have taken an important lead in assessment of internal controls. The analysis includes several recommendations. First, controls over possible fraud and corruption in IDA operations should be addressed on a broad front, starting with risk management processes and country assistance strategies, and including the development and deployment of specific additional instruments directed at fraud and corruption issues at the level of programs and projects. Second, the implementation of remedies for the other control deficiencies should be closely monitored. Management has recognized the need for such remedies, and many are contained in the Governance and Anti-corruption (GAC) program currently being implemented (including some still under preparation). These remedies appear in both scope and content to address the key issues, and they correspond well to those suggested by IEG in this report. However, they are not yet sufficiently operative to be tested and, if effective, thereby lessen the materiality of the controls weaknesses identified. IEG thus believes it would be premature to conclude that fraud and corruption (F&C) risks have been successfully resolved under the current IDA controls framework. -
Publication
Nigeria - Country Assistance Evaluation
(Washington, DC, 2008-09)The period from July 1, 1998 to June 30, 2007 (World Bank fiscal years 99-07) saw a substantial improvement in Nigeria's economic performance and outlook relative to the previous two decades, during which, notwithstanding the expanding production of oil and gas, Nigeria's social indicators deteriorated steadily and the country acquired among the worst reputations for corruption and poor governance. During its second term, the Obasanjo administration built on some actions taken previously to stabilize the economy, created an oil surplus account to prevent the fiscal instability of the earlier period, took significant steps to improve public financial management, put in place important new initiatives on corruption and transparency, and continued the privatization program. During this period, the Bank provided important assistance to the government of Nigeria. In spite of the relatively small weight of the Bank's financial contribution given Nigeria's earnings from oil, the Bank carried a great deal of weight as a source of objective advice and as a means of influencing perceptions of Nigeria in the international community. During the period to mid-2003, however, the Bank had some difficulty in determining the role it should play. A large number of lending operations were started, often without the base of local knowledge needed for success. At the same time, the Bank was slow to invest in analytic work. With the reform team providing clear Nigerian leadership in the second term of President Obasanjo, the Bank adapted its program in many areas to provide effective support. The Bank is well placed to continue to make an important contribution to Nigeria's economic and social progress. For this to occur, it is important that the Nigerian government take all necessary steps to ensure policy continuity as well as to extend and deepen the reforms initiated over the evaluation period-this is of critical importance for the country's long-term economic success. -
Publication
An Evaluation of Bank Support for Decentralization in Client Countries
(Washington, DC, 2008-08)Developing countries have decentralized functions and responsibilities for service delivery to lower levels of government at an increasing pace in recent years. The main reasons for such reforms are often political, but governments adopt them also as a way to improve service delivery and local governance. Typically, after the political decision is made, a country will turn to its development partners including the World Bank for support in implementing the new policies and achieving their development objectives. Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assessed the effectiveness of Bank support for decentralization between FY90 and FY07 in 20 countries, seeking to inform the design and implementation of future support. Given the difficulties of measuring the results of decentralization, the evaluation used intermediate outcome indicators such as strengthened legal and regulatory frameworks for intergovernmental relations, improved administrative capacity, and increased accountability of sub-national governments and functionaries to higher levels of government and to local citizens to assess the results of Bank support in these 20 cases. To examine potential lessons at a sectoral level, the evaluation also assessed whether Bank support for decentralization improved intermediate outcomes for service delivery in the education sector in 6 of the 20 countries.