Publication: The Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative : Findings from 10 Country Case Studies of World Bank and IMF Support
Loading...
Date
2005-01-01
ISSN
Published
2005-01-01
Editor(s)
Abstract
This book provides an independent assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative for the World Bank as well as the broader development community. It offers a in-depth review of the progress thus far, with particular focus on the role and effectiveness of the Bank's support, drawing from extensive discussions with national stakeholders in Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRSP) countries, research and analytical work, and country case study reports on ten PRSP countries: Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Tajikistan, Tanzania, and Vietnam. The author of The Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative concludes that the Initiative has led to improvements in national strategies and processes in some low-income countries, such as an increased poverty focus, a higher profile for monitoring results, and better donor-government dialogue. However, the contribution to broad poverty reduction, especially in more difficult country environments, is largely in jeopardy without significant changes. The author argues that the Initiative should be reoriented toward improving domestic processes and less on completion of documents, customizing the approach to particular country circumstances, filling analytical gaps to better understand which actions will provide the greatest poverty pay-off, and making sure the assistance programs of external partners are anchored in the country's poverty reduction strategy.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank Operations Evaluation Department; IMF Independent Evaluation Office. 2005. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Initiative : Findings from 10 Country Case Studies of World Bank and IMF Support. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7209 License: CC BY 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 Improving the World Bank's Development Effectiveness : What Does Evaluation Show?(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005)The pace of change in the overall performance of the developing world has not altered markedly over the past 20 years. The number of people living in extreme poverty declined from 1.5 billion in 1980 (40 percent of population), to 1.2 billion in 1990 (28 percent of population), to 1.1 billion in 2001 (21 percent of population). Growth per capita has followed much the same profile. In the 1980s, only about two-thirds of developing countries showed positive per capita income growth, and this percentage remains unchanged. Life expectancy and literacy indicators show overall improvements, but some regions show worrisome trends. There has been slow and steady progress in overall development outcomes during the period, but the speed and scale of change remain static. These averages, of course, mask huge differences across regions, with very worrisome increases in poverty and continued low growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Bank has transformed itself significantly in the past 10 years, and should be ready for further adjustments to current climate of rapid change. Greater selectivity, more flexibility, and improved efficiency within its chosen areas of intervention are needed going forward if a global institution such as the Bank is to remain useful and relevant and show concrete results in a fast-changing world.Publication OED Review of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process : Cambodia Case Study(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-07-06)This report analyzes the experience of Cambodia with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process3. The focus of the report is on evaluating the performance of the World Bank in supporting the PRSP initiative, not on appraising the authorities policies. Given the early stage of the PRS Process, with the document only formally launched by government in March 2003, the report focuses on the process of PRSP formulation in Cambodia and the genesis of the implementation phase. The report is structured as follows: the remainder of section one provides brief background information about Cambodia. Section two offers an appraisal of the PRSP formulation process and of the document itself, focusing on aspects relevant to an evaluation of the World Bank s role. Section three assesses the World Bank s support to the process. Section four summarizes the main points of the assessment and attempts to draw lessons of more general applicability.Publication 2004 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness : The World Bank's Contributions to Poverty Reduction(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005)This 2004 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness (ARDE): The World Bank's Contributions to Poverty Reduction, looks at the growth and poverty reduction experience of client countries. It assesses the extent to which Bank interventions have contributed to growth and poverty reduction and the effectiveness of different types of interventions. The review uses the key elements of the Bank's 2001 poverty reduction strategy to examine the extent to which these elements respond to the needs of the poor, are actually being carried out, and are having an impact. Like previous ARDEs, this review draws primarily on OED's recent evaluation studies, synthesizing and highlighting the findings of these studies around a common theme-in this case, poverty reduction.Publication Poverty Reduction and the World Bank : Progress in Operationalizing the WDR 2000/2001(Washington, DC, 2002-03)Attacking persistent poverty in low- and middle-income countries is the greatest single challenge facing the global development community as the world moves forward into the 21st century. But despite progress during the past decade, the battle is far from won, and progress has been slower than had been hoped at the beginning of the 1990s. This report discusses how the Bank is responding to this challenge and translating the approach of the World Development Report 2000/2001 on poverty into practice. This edition of the annual Progress Report on Poverty Reduction consolidates the findings of two documents prepared by World Bank staff and presented to the institution's Executive Board in June 2001: a report, Poverty Reduction and the World Bank: Progress in Fiscal 2000 and 2001, and a paper, Attacking Poverty: Operationalizing the World Development Report 2000/2001 at the World Bank. Progress and prospects towards achieving development goals, encompass attention to trends in income poverty, and contain human capital achievements, but responsive to broader understanding, and sharper focus in strengthening intellectual underpinnings, and refining strategic directions, and country business environment. Country assistance strategies should be reoriented to improving poverty analysis, and monitoring results, within a framework to empower communities, increase opportunities, and strengthening security.Publication Annual Review of Development Effectiveness 2006 : Getting Results(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)This Annual Review of Development Effectiveness (ARDE) brings together evaluative evidence from the recent work of the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank to address three questions surrounding this results chain in countries, with a particular focus on the Bank's role in the chain: (a) how effectively has economic growth translated into poverty reduction in Bank-assisted countries, and what factors have affected these results? (b) what factors have led to high-quality results in areas that deliver services to the poor? (c) what measures help raise the accountability of public institutions responsible for delivering and sustaining results? The report identifies features that characterize the country experiences and assistance programs that have delivered results: (1) effective programs have a twofold focus: they emphasize both the ingredients of growth and the measures that help the poor share in the growth process; (2) they build on a realistic and well-informed assessment of the political commitment and capacity of the recipient to deliver results, and they emphasize coalition and capacity building to help attain results; (3) they combine sustained engagement with clear intermediate milestones; and (4) they emphasize improved transparency and local control of public institutions, factors that spur these institutions to deliver results.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises : A Toolkit(Washington, DC, 2014-10-04)This Toolkit provides an overall framework with practical tools and information to help policymakers design and implement corporate governance reforms for state-owned enterprises. It covers the key elements of corporate governance, including legal and regulatory framework, state ownership arrangements, performance management systems, financial and fiscal discipline, boards of directors, transparency and disclosure, and protection of shareholders in mixed ownership companies. Experience shows that no one approach is universally applicable and the choice of measures depends on country and enterprise circumstances. The Toolkit thus provides a range of frameworks, concepts, case examples, checklists, and model documents that together aim to help government officials make the appropriate choices for their circumstances. The Toolkit concludes with guidance on managing the reform process, in particular how to prioritize and sequence reforms, build capacity, and engage with stakeholders.Publication World Development Report 2004(World Bank, 2003)Too often, services fail poor people in access, in quality, and in affordability. But the fact that there are striking examples where basic services such as water, sanitation, health, education, and electricity do work for poor people means that governments and citizens can do a better job of providing them. Learning from success and understanding the sources of failure, this year’s World Development Report, argues that services can be improved by putting poor people at the center of service provision. How? By enabling the poor to monitor and discipline service providers, by amplifying their voice in policymaking, and by strengthening the incentives for providers to serve the poor. Freedom from illness and freedom from illiteracy are two of the most important ways poor people can escape from poverty. To achieve these goals, economic growth and financial resources are of course necessary, but they are not enough. The World Development Report provides a practical framework for making the services that contribute to human development work for poor people. With this framework, citizens, governments, and donors can take action and accelerate progress toward the common objective of poverty reduction, as specified in the Millennium Development Goals.Publication Empowerment in Practice : From Analysis to Implementation(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)This book represents an effort to present an easily accessible framework to readers, especially those for whom empowerment remains a puzzling development concern, conceptually and in application. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 explains how the empowerment framework can be used for understanding, measuring, monitoring, and operationalizing empowerment policy and practice. Part 2 presents summaries of each of the five country studies, using them to discuss how the empowerment framework can be applied in very different country and sector contexts and what lessons can be learned from these test cases. While this book can offer only a limited empirical basis for the positive association between empowerment and development outcomes, it does add to the body of work supporting the existence of such a relationship. Perhaps more importantly, it also provides a framework for future research to test the association and to prioritize practical interventions seeking to empower individuals and groups.Publication Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05)Digitalization is the transformational opportunity of our time. The digital sector has become a powerhouse of innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Value added in the IT services sector grew at 8 percent annually during 2000–22, nearly twice as fast as the global economy. Employment growth in IT services reached 7 percent annually, six times higher than total employment growth. The diffusion and adoption of digital technologies are just as critical as their invention. Digital uptake has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.5 billion new internet users added from 2018 to 2022. The share of firms investing in digital solutions around the world has more than doubled from 2020 to 2022. Low-income countries, vulnerable populations, and small firms, however, have been falling behind, while transformative digital innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) have been accelerating in higher-income countries. Although more than 90 percent of the population in high-income countries was online in 2022, only one in four people in low-income countries used the internet, and the speed of their connection was typically only a small fraction of that in wealthier countries. As businesses in technologically advanced countries integrate generative AI into their products and services, less than half of the businesses in many low- and middle-income countries have an internet connection. The growing digital divide is exacerbating the poverty and productivity gaps between richer and poorer economies. The Digital Progress and Trends Report series will track global digitalization progress and highlight policy trends, debates, and implications for low- and middle-income countries. The series adds to the global efforts to study the progress and trends of digitalization in two main ways: · By compiling, curating, and analyzing data from diverse sources to present a comprehensive picture of digitalization in low- and middle-income countries, including in-depth analyses on understudied topics. · By developing insights on policy opportunities, challenges, and debates and reflecting the perspectives of various stakeholders and the World Bank’s operational experiences. This report, the first in the series, aims to inform evidence-based policy making and motivate action among internal and external audiences and stakeholders. The report will bring global attention to high-performing countries that have valuable experience to share as well as to areas where efforts will need to be redoubled.Publication Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition(Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank, 2016-09-13)The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.