Publication: The World Bank Group in Nepal, 2014–23
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2025-02-18
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2025-02-18
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This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the relevance, effectiveness, and adaptability of the World Bank Group’s support to Nepal from FY 2014 through FY23. The evaluation period spans the FY14–18 Country Partnership Strategy and the FY19–24 Country Partnership Framework (CPF). The CPE’s scope includes the financing, knowledge, and convening support from the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency to the government of Nepal. The CPE looks closely at three areas of the Bank Group’s support—namely, its support for Nepal’s transition to federalism, private sector development (PSD) and job creation, and climate and disaster resilience. The CPE provides lessons to help the Bank Group rethink its development approach as it designs a new CPF for Nepal. This evaluation finds that the Bank Group was successful in supporting Nepal, including in mounting rapid and large-scale responses to devastating earthquakes and the COVID-19 pandemic, but did not always effectively consider the country’s capacity and political economy challenges. The World Bank’s earthquake and COVID-19 responses showed the World Bank at its best, with the World Bank building on these successes during the evaluation period by further strengthening Nepal’s resilience to major disasters and shocks. However, both country strategies covered by this evaluation acknowledged implementation challenges. At times, the significant financing support of the Bank Group program surpassed the government’s absorptive capacity and did not sufficiently consider lessons from past projects. At other times, program support insufficiently considered political barriers to advancing the program. This reduced the outcomes from the Bank Group’s support, including for more complex policy and institutional support.
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“World Bank. 2025. The World Bank Group in Nepal, 2014–23. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42828 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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