01. Annual Reports & Independent Evaluations
1,030 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
Sub-collections of this Collection
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 446
-
Publication
Financial Inclusion: Lessons from World Bank Group Experience, Fiscal Years 2014–22
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-08-28)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. -
Publication
The World Bank Group in the Kyrgyz Republic: Country Program Evaluation, Fiscal Years 2014–21
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-10)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. -
Publication
International Finance Corporation Platforms Approach: Addressing Development Challenges at Scale - An Independent Evaluation (Approach Paper)
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-03)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. -
Publication
International Finance Corporation Additionality in Middle-Income Countries: An Independent Evaluation April 17, 2022
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-03)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. -
Publication
The World Bank’s Role in and Use of the Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework: Independent Evaluation Group
(Washington, DC, 2023-05-02)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. -
Publication
Evaluation Insight Note: Domestic Revenue Mobilization
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-02-01)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. -
Publication
MIGA Annual Report 2022
(Washington, DC : Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, 2022-10-06)In FY22, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) issued 4.9 billion dollars in new guarantees across a record 54 projects. The projects focused on encouraging private investors to work with host governments by helping manage and mitigate political risks. Working with the clients and partners, the Bank supported 6.5 billion dollars in total financing (from private and public sources). Almost a third of our gross issuances supported projects in International Development Association (IDA) (lower-income) countries; 12 percent went to fragile and conflict-affected countries; and 28 percent of the total guaranteed investment of the projects supported contributed to climate finance. FY22 issuances are expected to help provide access to power to some 15 million people, support nearly 20,000 jobs, and enable 1.9 billion dollars in loans, including those for small and medium enterprises and climate-related activities. An institution of the World Bank Group, MIGA is committed to strong development impact and promotion of projects that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. MIGA helps investors mitigate the risks of restrictions on currency conversion and transfer, breach of contract by governments, expropriation, and war and civil disturbance, as well as offering credit enhancement on sovereign obligations. -
Publication
Reducing Disaster Risks from Natural Hazards: An Evaluation of the World Bank’s Support, Fiscal Years 2010–20
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-08-24)Disasters caused by natural hazards are increasingly threatening the lives and livelihoods of the world’s poor and disaster-vulnerable populations. Climate change is further exacerbating the negative impacts of disasters caused by natural hazards. Investing in disaster risk reduction (DRR) has strong economic and social benefits and is essential for achieving climate change adaptation. IEG's evaluation shows that the World Bank is successfully supporting clients to increasingly take up DRR actions through strategic and comprehensive country engagement. The World Bank has developed an extensive portfolio of DRR activities, tripling its support over FY10-20. It focuses its DRR work on countries with the most serious natural hazards, uses synergistic pillars of DRR engagement, and increasingly mainstreams DRR into sector operations. Support for DRR in IDA, small island developing states, and IDA-FCV countries has been comprehensive. The Bank has also shifted from post-disaster response toward pre-disaster risk reduction. The Bank has shown that it is able to overcome political and financial constraints to DRR client uptake by engaging the right decision makers using rigorous evidence and by building on disaster reconstruction efforts. Analytical work that quantified risks, assessed costs and benefits and communicates impacts has highly influenced DRR uptake. However, there are gaps in coverage for some regions, sectors, and hazards that require attention. There are DRR coverage gaps in Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa for all serious hazards. Also, while the World Bank is conducting analytical work on the needs of disaster vulnerable groups, there has been slow progress on incorporating their needs into operations. There are also missed opportunities to use conflict-sensitive approaches to mitigate conflict risks and pursue peace-building. Also, the Bank’s frequent inability to demonstrate the effects of its DRR activities on reduced exposure and vulnerability has consequences on its ability to make a development case for risk reduction. Most DRR operations are not providing sufficient information to establish the level of DRR being achieved, inhibiting an understanding of how DRR contributes to development impacts, such as reduced economic loss and mortality. IEG offers the World Bank four recommendations to improve their performance on disaster risk reduction: (i) Incorporate DRR activities in regions and sectors and for hazards that exhibit significant coverage gaps. (ii) Identify and measure the effects of DRR activities on exposure and vulnerability to strengthen the development case for clients facing serious disaster risks. (iii) Integrate the needs of populations disproportionately vulnerable to disasters caused by natural hazards into DRR project targeting and design, implementation, and results reporting. (iv) In countries affected by serious natural hazards and fragility and conflict risks, identify and assess the ways in which hazards and conflict interrelate and use this to inform country engagement and project design. -
Publication
Approach Paper, Country Program Evaluation - Papua New Guinea: An Evaluation of World Bank Support FY08-22
(World Bank,Washington, DC, 2022-06-28)This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) will assess the World Bank Group’s engagement in Papua New Guinea between FY08 and FY22. The Papua New Guinea has an abundant resource endowment of oil and mineral wealth, but this wealth has not translated into significant welfare gains for most citizens. Papua New Guinea’s fragmented geography and frequent exposure to disasters caused by natural hazards present significant challenges for delivering services to citizens. The evaluation is designed to derive lessons from Bank Group engagement in Papua New Guinea to inform the next Country Partnership Framework (CPF). The CPE will also provide lessons on the implementation of the International Development Association special themes of climate change, gender, and fragility, conflict, and violence and of the cross-cutting issues of debt sustainability and governance and institutions. Lessons may also be of relevance to other resource-rich countries. -
Publication
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency’s Experience with Non-Honoring of Sovereign, Sub-Sovereign, and State-Owned Enterprise Financial Obligation Guarantees: Meso-Evaluation
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-05-19)The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) introduced its Non-Honoring (NH) products - the Non-Honoring of Sovereign and Sub-Sovereign Financial Obligations and the Non-Honoring of Financial Obligations by a State-Owned Enterprise - in 2009. The objective of these products was to crowd-in private insurance capacity to support investments in International Development Association and Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situation countries, and to encourage state-owned enterprises to adopt good corporate governance, environmental and social sustainability practices. These products were expected to benefit guaranteed lenders through lower cost of financing and public sector borrowers through increased and more diversified funding sources. Since their introduction, the NH products have gained a substantial share of MIGA’s overall business. This report provides the first independent evaluation of MIGA’s experience with its NH products and aims to offer feedback and lessons to inform future strategies. The report reviewed all 34 NH projects implemented by MIGA between 2009 and 2019 to assess the extent to which they met their objectives and contributed to enhancing MIGA’s development effectiveness and additionality. The report invites MIGA to address questions related to the suitability of these products for IDA and FCS countries and on the methodology for evaluating their development impact.