01. Annual Reports & Independent Evaluations

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Financial Inclusion: Lessons from World Bank Group Experience, Fiscal Years 2014–22

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-08-28) Independent Evaluation Group

This evaluation explores how and with what effect the World Bank Group has supported financial inclusion for the microenterprises, poor households, women, and other excluded groups. Financial inclusion is defined as the use of financial services by individuals and firms. It encompasses financial access—owning an account—and the use of financial services. There has been an impressive growth in account ownership globally, from 55% of adults in 2014 to 71% in 2021, although usage is more limited as some accounts are inactive. Critically, both financial access and the use of financial services remain major challenges for microenterprises, poor households, women, and other excluded groups. The objective of the evaluation is to assess whether the Bank Group has been doing the right things and whether it has been doing things right on financial inclusion. The evaluation captures lessons from the World Bank’s experience supporting financial inclusion for microenterprises, poor households, women, and other excluded groups and updates a 2015 financial inclusion evaluation. The evaluation includes a retrospective look at the drive for universal financial access and examines progress and challenges in women’s access to financial services. The evaluation also assesses the Bank Group’s support for digital financial services as vehicles for financial inclusion. Finally, the report examines the World Bank’s response to COVID-19 as it relates to financial inclusion. The evaluation proposes three recommendations: (i) The World Bank and IFC should further encourage account use by underserved groups, including women and rural poor people, and emphasize this more in their strategies and projects. (ii) The World Bank and IFC should design and implement more comprehensive approaches that address constraints in the enabling environment for DFS to reach underserved and excluded groups. (iii) To enhance learning on what works to increase the beneficial use of financial services at the MPWEG, the World Bank and IFC should collect outcome data across different underserved and excluded groups, initially on a pilot basis.
The World Bank Group in the Kyrgyz Republic: Country Program Evaluation, Fiscal Years 2014–21

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-10) Independent Evaluation Group

This report assesses the relevance and effectiveness of the World Bank’s engagement in the Kyrgyz Republic between fiscal years 2014 and 2021. The Kyrgyz Republic is a landlocked, lower-middle-income country that is highly dependent on remittances and natural resources. Poverty levels declined from 37% in 2013 to 20% in 2019. However, the country’s population remains vulnerable, and broad-based economic growth was elusive over the evaluation period. The Kyrgyz Republic faces major development challenges including weak governance, barriers to private sector development, and low quality of essential local public services. This Country Program Evaluation assesses the relevance and effectiveness of the World Bank’s engagement in the Kyrgyz Republic between fiscal years 2014 and 2021. It evaluates the Bank’s contributions to the country’s development in priority areas, focusing on support for governance, private sector development, and essential local public services. The evaluation distills lessons from Bank Group experience to inform future Bank Group engagement in the Kyrgyz Republic.
International Finance Corporation Platforms Approach: Addressing Development Challenges at Scale - An Independent Evaluation (Approach Paper)

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-03) World Bank

Recurring development challenges and new compounding crises affecting client countries and firms constrain the ambition of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to contribute to attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The recurring challenges, including insufficient private sector participation in development financing, continue to affect emerging markets and developing economies and the firms within them. Two related initiatives—the IFC capital increase and the IFC 3.0 strategy—underpin IFC’s goal to contribute to the SDGs by 2030. IFC’s capital increase package was based on the IFC 3.0 strategy, which requires creating new markets through advisory and upstream services and mobilizing private capital from new sources and through new approaches (IFC 2017, 2018, 2020a). IFC has introduced a platforms approach to scale up its interventions in accordance with IFC 3.0 and the capital increase objectives. IFC defines platforms as thematic interventions—at a regional, global, or sectoral level—designed to address a specific development challenge (IFC 2022b). The main purpose of the evaluation is to assess whether the platforms approach offers IFC a means to achieve its capital increase and IFC 3.0 objectives while meeting the Board’s and clients’ expectations.
International Finance Corporation Additionality in Middle-Income Countries: An Independent Evaluation April 17, 2022

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-03) World Bank

Additionality is a core feature of private sector development finance institutions (DFIs). It is the unique contribution that a DFI or a multilateral/ bilateral bank brings to a private investment project that is not offered by commercial sources of finance. The key idea is that the investment project should add value without crowding out private sector activity. Identifying and articulating project additionality is particularly important in middle- income countries (MICs) since financial markets in MICs are more developed, and private investment far exceeds official development assistance. This evaluation report examines the relevance and effectiveness of IFC’s approach to additionality in MICs and seeks to explain the factors that contribute to or constrain its realization. While the evaluation focuses on IFC’s additionality on the level of the project, it also applies the lens of country and sector context to draw additional learning. Thus, it considers whether additionality can occur beyond the level of a single project—for example, at the country and sector level. Both at the project level and beyond the project, the evaluation derives lessons and offers recommendations on how IFC can further strengthen its additionality.
The World Bank’s Role in and Use of the Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework: Independent Evaluation Group

(Washington, DC, 2023-05-02) World Bank

This evaluation, requested by the Committee on Development Effectiveness of the Executive Board of the International Development Association (IDA), is intended to provide input and insight into the upcoming World Bank–International Monetary Fund (IMF) review of the Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework (LICDSF) currently planned for fiscal year 2023. The sharp rise in debt stress among low-income countries and a changing global risk landscape leading up to and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed concerns with debt sustainability to the top of the global policy agenda. This evaluation assesses the World Bank’s inputs into the LIC-DSF and how it uses LIC-DSF outputs to inform various corporate and country-level decisions. Main findings and recommendations include: (i) Expectations of the World Bank in taking the lead on long-term growth prospects should be clarified. (ii) Recently increased attention to debt data coverage should be sustained and extended; greater attention is needed to assess data quality. (iii) The DSA should be more directly and consistently used to inform priorities for the identification of fiscally oriented prior actions in development policy operations and SDFP performance and policy actions. (iv) The World Bank should continue to give increasing attention in the LIC-DSF to the long-term implications of climate change, in terms of both growth and fiscal requirements of adaptation and mitigation.
Evaluation Insight Note: Domestic Revenue Mobilization

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-02-01) Independent Evaluation Group

Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) has become an increasingly important part of international and country-level policy agendas. This Evaluation Insight Note gathers insights from World Bank projects and operations supporting DRM through a detailed review of six Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) Project Performance Assessment Reports (PPARs). It synthesizes key issues that affected each project’s ability to sustain results across five countries (Croatia, Guatemala, Liberia, Pakistan, and Panama) and one state (Rio de Janeiro in Brazil). Interventions covered include four development policy operations (DPOs), one technical assistance loan, and one specific investment loan (now called investment project financing). Four insights from this synthesis are: 1) In the operations reviewed, political economy constraints were usually identified and analyzed at the time of approval and, for the most part, reasonable mitigation measures were identified ex ante; however, tax reforms were still derailed. 2) Prior actions in DPOs often benefited from being paired with investment projects or technical support from development partners. 3) Although coordinating with development partners was often discussed in project documents, extensive coordination occurred in only a few cases, with mixed results. 4) Results frameworks to track progress on DRM were often not well articulated, sometimes missing baselines or targets, being overly optimistic, or lacking clear results chains.
Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2022: Concept Note

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-04-25) Independent Evaluation Group

The Results and Performance of the World Bank Group (RAP) report 2022 presents an annual review of evidence from IEG evaluations and validation work on the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group. This year’s RAP will focus on the country level. The Bank Group’s outcome orientation agenda emphasizes high-level outcomes, and, by focusing on the country level, the 2022 RAP aligns with that agenda. This focus also responds to the interest of members of the Bank Group’s Board of Executive Directors for reporting on country level performance. In this context, the RAP will conduct an in-depth analysis of country level evidence contained in IEG’s Country Program Evaluations (CPEs) and Completion and Learning Report Reviews (CLR Reviews) through two types of analyses. First, overall country program performance will be assessed by tracking country program ratings over time. Second, the country program will be used as the entry point to examine the extent to which the Bank Group’s support (i.e., project portfolio and Advisory Services and Analytics) contributed to the achievement of the objectives of the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) and the intended development outcome. Furthermore, the extent to which there was a line of sight between the development outcome and high-level outcomes will also be examined.
International Finance Corporation Additionality in Middle-Income Countries: Approach Paper

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-03-02) Independent Evaluation Group

Accounting for almost half of global gross domestic product and 70 percent of the world’s population, middle-income countries (MICs) face multiple development challenges limiting achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including poverty and inclusion, climate change, financial access, and economic diversification and market development. The International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) portfolio is focused heavily on MICs. Additionality is the unique support that IFC brings to a private client or client country that is not typically offered by commercial sources of finance (IFC 2019). This evaluation assesses the unique support and value addition (additionality) that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) provides to middle-income countries (MICs). It will cover IFC’s support of MICs through investment and advisory projects, and through its platforms and partnerships. The primary audience is the World Bank Group Board and IFC management and staff, however some findings of the evaluation will be relevant to a broader audience including multilateral and bilateral financing private sector activities, investors, and government officials and practitioners in client countries.
The World Bank Group in Bangladesh, Fiscal Years 2011–20: Country Program Evaluation

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022) Independent Evaluation Group

This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group’s engagement with Bangladesh during the past decade (fiscal year [FY]11–20) and provides lessons to inform the next Bank Group supported strategy with Bangladesh and to countries facing similar challenges. The Bank Group made important contributions over the past decade to help Bangladesh address several of its development challenges. Most notable include increasing power generation capacity, improving access to clean energy, all season roads, primary and secondary education, reducing child and maternal mortality and improving financial inclusion. However, achievements fell short in several areas, including insufficient investment in data and measurement particularly on learning outcomes and limited progress on regional connectivity. In other areas, domestic vested interests prevailed resulting in little progress in improving the business environment, natural resource management, banking reform and tariff reform. Bank Group support adapted in response to changing circumstances following the Padma Bridge cancellation by reallocating resources to sectors in which the Bank Group had more traction and a long-standing history of effective engagement. However, rising fiscal vulnerabilities received insufficient attention. Despite a deteriorating trend in institutional quality and economic management and declining core IDA allocation, the Bank Group significantly increased financing to Bangladesh, including through IDA’s Scale Up Facility. Key lessons include: (i) Rebalancing the portfolio in the face of a difficult political economy helped the Bank Group remain relevant in Bangladesh; (ii) Where reform is deemed critical to sustain development progress but government commitment is weak or absent, continued targeted analysis of key development constraints can help prepare the ground for future action when a window of opportunity presents itself; (iii) Measuring improvements in the quality of education requires deliberate and ongoing investment in data collection; (iv) Increasing overall IDA financing in the context of deteriorating CPIA rating raises a question about the significance that IDA assigns to measures of institutional quality and governance; (v) Given underlying concerns with data quality and coverage, the World Bank might have been more qualified in its public statements about the quality of the macroeconomic framework; and (vi) Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) arrangements between the World Bank and the IMF constrain the ability of the World Bank to provide comprehensive and timely assessments of financial sector vulnerabilities in nonsystematically important economies.
World Bank Group Engagement with Morocco 2011–21: Approach Paper

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2021-12-13) Independent Evaluation Group

This Country Program Evaluation aims to assess the World Bank Group’s contribution to Morocco’s development trajectory over the past decade (fiscal years 2011–21) and is timed to inform the next Country Partnership Framework and future Bank Group engagements in the country. The Country Program Evaluation will use a range of methods to assess how the Bank Group has supported Morocco’s efforts to tackle major constraints to achieving its objective of reaching upper-middle-income-country status. The evaluation will focus on three outcome areas: (i) fostering private sector–led growth that absorbs a growing labor force; (ii) strengthening inclusive human capital formation and addressing the obstacles to women and youth labor force participation; and (iii) reducing climate risks and natural resource depletion and addressing their combined effects on the most vulnerable people, especially in rural areas.