Publication: International Finance Corporation Additionality in Middle-Income Countries: An Independent Evaluation April 17, 2022
Loading...
Files
 193 downloads 
 84 downloads 
 14 downloads 
Published
2023-05-03
ISSN
Date
2023-05-03
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
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.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2023. International Finance Corporation Additionality in Middle-Income Countries: An Independent Evaluation April 17, 2022. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39776 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
- Publication International Finance Corporation Additionality in Middle-Income Countries(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-03-02)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.
- Publication Can Malaysia Escape the Middle-Income Trap? A Strategy for Penang(2009-06-01)How can Penang upgrade and diversify its economy? This paper addresses this question using a number of methodologies that have been developed for assessing competitiveness and identifying the direction of future industrial evolution. The results show that although Penang was successful in attracting foreign direct investment to the electronics industry, this has not translated into a deepening of industrial capabilities or the nurturing of innovation capacity in Penang. No large Malaysian firms in Penang have taken the lead in innovation and there is little new entry by local firms, despite incentives provided by local and national governments are generous. Universiti Sains Malaysia, the principal university in Penang, is contributing through provision of skills, and it is beginning to multiply university industry linkages. However, the university s research activities are too limited and too diffuse to significantly initiate innovation by local industry. Under the current circumstances, and given its relatively small size, Penang will have to try much harder to strengthen its competitive advantage in its most important industry -electronics- through actions that build research capital. It will also have to increase its efforts to develop the potential of other value-adding activities, such as medical services and tourism. A strategy focused on localization economies is likely to be the most feasible option.
- Publication Middle-Income Countries : Development Challenges and Growing Global Role(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-08)There has been much debate recently about the role of international development institutions, such as the World Bank in middle-income countries. Some observers have suggested that middle-income countries have reached a stage in their economic development that calls into question the rationale for development institutions' continued engagement in these countries. But the authors find that middle-income countries continue to face significant development challenges. The nature of these challenges varies substantially, but all of these countries face an agenda calling for continued partnership with the international development community. Middle-income countries still have high levels of poverty. They are home to more than three-quarters of the world's poor (those living on less than U$S 2 a day). Poverty is pervasive in some middle-income countries, while in others the problem is one of major concentrations of poverty in backward areas. And recent crises have revealed the fragility of some of the gains against poverty in these countries. On the policy front, some countries have made great strides in reform, but many lag considerable behind, and even among the advanced reformers, the unfinished policy agenda is substantial. The countries' institutional capacity to manage reform varies greatly. So does their integration with the global economy. Many middle-income countries still have little access to international capital markets, and even those with better access, must contend with volatility in private capital flows. Beyond the need to assist middle-income countries in addressing these challenges, the case for continued engagement by international development institutions, derives from the increasing importance of these countries for a range of global public goods. With their growing role, and integration in the global economy, partnership with middle-income countries is a key element of global collective action, in such areas as reducing global poverty, maintaining international financial stability, improving global economic governance, protecting the global environmental commons, and fighting systemic health threats.
- Publication Enhancing Financial Capability and Behavior in Low- and Middle-Income Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01)The Russia Trust Fund for Financial Literacy and Education was set up to support the advancement of financial literacy and capability in low- and middle-income countries. Established in 2008 with funding provided by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, the Trust Fund enabled the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to conduct methodological, analytical, and policy work on financial literacy, capability, and education. The program has supported work on the definition and measurement of financial capability, methods, and tools to understand the impact of financial capability programs; and field research on interventions designed to enhance financial capability. This volume presents the results of pilot projects financed by the Trust Fund. These include some truly pioneering research into new areas for financial capacity building, including the use of diaries to increase financial awareness, innovative methods for information provision, and new ways to deliver messages that encourage safer financial behavior, such as feature films, TV soap operas, and comic books. These methods open financial literacy to a much broader audience, and with potentially greater impact, than has been achieved through more conventional means.
- Publication Earnings Growth and Employment Creation : An Assessment of World Bank Support in Three Middle-Income Countries(Washington, DC, 2009-06)This assessment reviews earnings and employment outcomes in Colombia, Tunisia, and Turkey during 1998-2007, as well as five policy areas (the MILES framework) likely to affect those outcomes: macroeconomic conditions, investment climate, labor regulations, education, and social protection. Employment-related outcomes in the three countries were mixed, with notable progress in economic growth, earnings and poverty reduction, but not in the employment to- population ratio or unemployment rate. This underscores the desirability of focusing on the full set of employment-related variables Gross Domestic Product (GDP), poverty, employment, unemployment, and earnings - in an integrative fashion rather than just on employment when setting the objectives of Bank support. This focus will need better employment-related statistics, an area where the Bank can help further. Bank objectives in the three countries focused more on MILES components than on employment itself. Bank support in the three countries achieved differential progress in the individual MILES components, with the most progress on macro stabilization, followed in approximate order by progress on the investment climate, education, social protection, and labor taxation and regulations. The experience of the three countries illustrates how analytic and advisory activities can be the main instrument of support in those areas where progress in reform is difficult and the need for building engagement and consensus is critical.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
- Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.
- Publication Europe and Central Asia Economic Update, Spring 2025: Accelerating Growth through Entrepreneurship, Technology Adoption, and Innovation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-23)Business dynamism and economic growth in Europe and Central Asia have weakened since the late 2000s, with productivity growth driven largely by resource reallocation between firms and sectors rather than innovation. To move up the value chain, countries need to facilitate technology adoption, stronger domestic competition, and firm-level innovation to build a more dynamic private sector. Governments should move beyond broad support for small- and medium-sized enterprises and focus on enabling the most productive firms to expand and compete globally. Strengthening competition policies, reducing the presence of state-owned enterprises, and ensuring fair market access are crucial. Limited availability of long-term financing and risk capital hinders firm growth and innovation. Economic disruptions are a shock in the short term, but they provide an opportunity for implementing enterprise and structural reforms, all of which are essential for creating better-paying jobs and helping countries in the region to achieve high-income status.
- Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.
- Publication Services Unbound(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-09)Services are a new force for innovation, trade, and growth in East Asia and Pacific. The dramatic diffusion of digital technologies and partial policy reforms in services--from finance, communication, and transport to retail, health, and education--is transforming these economies. The result is higher productivity and changing jobs in the services sector, as well as in the manufacturing sectors that use these services. A region that has thrived through openness to trade and investment in manufacturing still maintains innovation-inhibiting barriers to entry and competition in key services sectors. 'Services Unbound: Digital Technologies and Policy Reform in East Asia and Pacific' makes the case for deeper domestic reforms and greater international cooperation to unleash a virtuous cycle of increased economic opportunity and enhanced human capacity that would power development in the region.
- Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.