This paper uses regression analysis to identify which country context, reform content, process, and project management variables predict the performance of public sector management projects, as measured by the Independent Evaluation Group's project outcome ratings.
... See More + The paper draws on data from a large sample of World Bank public sector management projects that were approved between 1990 and 2013. It contributes to an emerging literature that uses cross-country regressions to analyze public sector management reform patterns. The findings suggest that political context factors have a greater impact on the performance of public sector management projects than on other projects. Specifically, public sector management projects perform better in countries with democratic regimes than autocratic ones. They fare better in the presence of programmatic political parties and in more aid-dependent countries. Project managers' subjective risk assessments predict performance in public sector management operations better than objective risk indicators. These findings suggest that the performance of public sector management projects would benefit from a better alignment of project design with political context and from a more open dialogue about risk between task team leaders and management.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6798 MAR 01, 2014
The development objective of the Sustainable Livelihoods and Adaptation to Climate Change (SLACC) Project for India is to improve adaptive capacity of the rural poor, to climate variability and change affecting farm based livelihoods, through community-based interventions.
... See More + Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: climate change can adversely impact the rural households through its negative effect on agricultural productivity, water and biomass availability, health, infrastructure, among others. The main agricultural livelihoods of the poor (crop cultivation, livestock, fisheries, etc.) are mainly dependent on natural resources such as rainfall, fodder, water bodies. Climatic hazards that affect the availability of these natural resources, adversely affect the livelihoods of the poor by impacting agriculture production, affecting incomes and preventing building up of assets. Low access to productive resources, financial services and information as well as low assets and high debt, greatly enhances the vulnerability of the rural poor to climate related shocks and stresses. Households exposed to repeat climate hazards face further deprivation due to distress sale of assets, high debt burden, etc. Hence, there is a need to build the adaptive capacity in the rural-poor communities through multiple interventions.
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The development objective of the Participatory Irrigation Development Project for Philippines is to improve irrigation service delivery on a financially and technically sustainable basis that will contribute to increased agricultural production and productivity among beneficiary farmers in irrigated areas.
... See More + This restructuring seeks to cancel a loan covenant (reference schedule 2, section I.A, paragraph 6) which refers to the engagement of reputable audit consultants to assist in strengthening the internal control systems of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), including its internal audit unit. To comply with the covenant, NIA commits to continue the strengthening of its internal audit service (IAS) and participate continuously in internal audit activities such as those supported by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Commission on Audit (COA).
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The objective of the Additional Financing for the Community Development and Safety Nets Project for Togo is to provide poor communities with greater access to basic socio-economic infrastructures and social safety nets.
... See More + The additional financing will help finance the costs associated with: (a) scaling up the Projet de Developpement Communautaire et des Filets Sociaux (PDCplus) by increasing support for community infrastructure sub-projects; and (b) providing financing for a new community-based school feeding sub-component, which was supported under the PDC until it closed on September 30, 2013. This project paper also seeks approval for restructuring the PDCplus in order to extend the closing date, reallocate funds, and revise outcome indicator targets in line with the expanded activities.
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The objective of the Emergency Food Security and Social Protection Project for Madagascar is to strengthen the recipient's immediate capacity to respond effectively to the food security and locust crises, by: (i) increasing agricultural production capacity in project areas, while enabling extremely poor households, in the project areas, to access cash transfers and cash for work activities; and (ii) improving the recipient's capacity to respond promptly and efficiently to an eligible crisis or emergency.
... See More + There are four components to the project, the first component being restoring and maintaining essential agricultural productive capacity. The second component is the providing a social safety net for the poor. This component provides a basic safety net to the poorest families in selected project areas through cash-for-work activities or conditional cash transfers. The cash-for-work activities, selected for their potential synergies with the productive activities under component A, will provide selected extremely poor households with temporary employment of up to 45 days per year; households that cannot provide labor (such as female-headed households) will receive temporary cash transfers. The third component is the contingency emergency fund. This component establishes a disaster recovery contingency fund that could be triggered in the event of a natural disaster through formal declaration of a national or regional state of emergency, or upon a formal request from the Government of Madagascar in the wake of a disaster. Finally, the fourth component is the project management.
The objective of the North East Region Livelihoods Project (NERLP) for India is to empower poor households in rural areas directly so that they are able to take advantage of the opportunities for improvement of their livelihoods especially women, unemployed youth and the most disadvantaged in four project states.
... See More + All community subprojects will be prepared by the community groups based on transparent and participatory processes, involving full participation of the members of the Community Development Groups (CDG), Natural Resource Management Groups (NRMG) or Self Help Group (SHG), without any prescription by the project. Any project requiring compulsory acquisition of private land or purchase of land is ineligible for support under NERLP, has been included in the negative list of the project. While NERLP does not involve any land acquisition by the borrower, there could be minor, potential adverse impacts caused by community projects on irrigation, link roads, microhydel, markets and other physical infrastructure etc. To avoid, minimize and mitigate any adverse impacts associated with community subprojects involving land, the safeguard mechanisms by way of screening or negative checklist, documentation, grievance redressed mechanism, and participatory and transparent decision making with approval and endorsement of the Village Council or Panchayat have been included.
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The report includes the thematic and chronological listing of items pertaining to the Board and and committees work programs for the third quarter of FY14 to the first quarter of FY15.
... See More + Additional information on the work program, including a database of forthcoming Board items, which is updated on an ongoing basis, is available on the Executive Directors' Portal (EDsPortal). An updated executive directors' work program is discussed each month at the Executive Directors' steering committee meeting.
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The development objective of the Demand for Good Governance Project for Cambodia is to enhance the Demand for Good Governance (DFGG) in priority reform areas by strengthening institutions, supporting partnerships, and sharing lessons.
... See More + The six month closing date extension will be the second extension of the project, and bring the total cumulative extension of the original closing date (March 31, 2013) to 18 months. This extension of the project closing date is required for two of the four implementing agencies, the Ministry of Interior Project Coordinating Office (PCO) and the Arbitration Council (AC). An extension will facilitate transition and sustainability, and support two qualitative results (policy and practice triggers and sustainable capacity).
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This paper investigates the factors associated with foreign direct investment "surges" and "stops," defined as sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of gross foreign direct investment inflows to the developing world and differentiated based on whether these events are led by waves in greenfield investments or mergers and acquisitions.
... See More + Greenfield-led surges and stops occur more frequently than mergers and acquisitions-led ones and different factors are associated with the onset of the two types of events. Global liquidity is the only factor significantly associated with a surge, regardless of its kind, while decline in global economic growth and a surge in the preceding year are the only predictors of a stop. Greenfield-led surges and stops are more likely in low-income and resource-rich countries than elsewhere. Global growth, financial openness, and domestic economic and financial instability enable mergers and acquisitions-led surges. These results differ from those in the literature on surges and stops and are particularly relevant in countries where foreign direct investments dominate capital flows.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6771 FEB 01, 2014
The World Bank Africa Social Protection Strategy for 2012-22 highlights the need for a strong evidence base to inform the design and implementation of social protection programs in Africa.
... See More + Since 2009 the World Bank has conducted comprehensive social safety net assessments in 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The countries reviewed are Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia. The findings of these assessments and other studies of safety net programs were recently synthesized into a regional review. This review provides an assessment of the current status of safety net programs in Africa and presents lessons on how they can be strengthened to better tackle poverty and vulnerability. The review finds that social safety nets are on the rise in Africa, and beginning to evolve from scattered stand-alone programs into safety net systems. Until recently, many African countries approached social protection on a largely ad hoc basis. Then the global economic crisis threatened recent progress in poverty reduction. Now social protection programming has started to develop from emergency food aid programs to one-off safety net interventions, and then to targeted cash transfers and cash-for-work programs. Some countries now seek to consolidate programs into national systems. There is progress towards articulating national social protection strategies, but there is still a long way to go.
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The World Bank Africa Social Protection Strategy for 2012-22 highlights the need for a strong evidence base to inform the design and implementation of social protection programs in Africa.
... See More + Since 2009 the World Bank has conducted comprehensive social safety net assessments in 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The countries reviewed are Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia. The findings of these assessments and other studies of safety net programs were recently synthesized into a regional review. This review provides an assessment of the current status of safety net programs in Africa and presents lessons on how they can be strengthened to better tackle poverty and vulnerability. The review finds that social safety nets are on the rise in Africa, and beginning to evolve from scattered stand-alone programs into safety net systems. Until recently, many African countries approached social protection on a largely ad hoc basis. Then the global economic crisis threatened recent progress in poverty reduction. Now social protection programming has started to develop from emergency food aid programs to one-off safety net interventions, and then to targeted cash transfers and cash-for-work programs. Some countries now seek to consolidate programs into national systems. There is progress towards articulating national social protection strategies, but there is still a long way to go.
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In 2012, the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region continued its successful drive to reduce poverty and build the middle class. The proportion of the region's 600 million people living in extreme poverty, defined in the region as life on less than $2.50 a day, was cut in half between 2003 and 2012 to 12.3 percent.
... See More + Reflecting the upward mobility out of poverty, households vulnerable to falling back into poverty became the largest group in LAC in 2005, and represent almost 38 percent of the population. However, in the last two years, the share of vulnerable households has started to decline. The middle class, currently 34.3 percent of the population, is growing rapidly and is projected to replace the vulnerable as the largest economic group in LAC by 2016. The Southern Cone region (including Brazil) continued to be the most dynamic region and the main driver of poverty reduction in LAC, while poverty in Central America and Mexico proved more stubborn. About 68 percent of poverty reduction between 2003 and 2012 was driven by economic growth, with the remaining 32 percent arising from decline in inequality. Overall, equality of access to basic childhood goods and services has improved in recent years. Yet access can be further improved, and serious issues remain concerning the quality of those goods and services, particularly in education and housing infrastructure. Moreover, access increases with parental education and income or assets, reflecting low intergenerational mobility in many countries in the region. As with poverty reduction, most of the progress in equality of access since 2000 has come in the Southern Cone and the Andean regions, while many of Central America's countries managed only small improvements. There are also severe differences at the subnational level and between urban and rural areas, highlighting the need to strengthen the capacity of local governments to deliver high quality basic services to all their citizens.
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This paper is part of a larger effort to document, assess, and promote scalable models and approaches to empower poor communities to manage a climate and disaster risk agenda in support of their development goals and to identify practical ways of getting climate and disaster risk financing directly to the ground level where impacts are felt.
... See More + Social funds, social protection systems and safety nets, community-driven development (CDD) projects, livelihoods-support and related operational platforms can serve as useful vehicles for promoting community-level resilience to disaster and climate risk. This paper examines the World Bank's Community-Driven Development (CDD) portfolio to assess experience to date and to explore the potential for building the resilience of vulnerable communities to climate and disaster risk through CDD programs. It aims to be useful to both the Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management practitioner as well as the CDD practitioner. The paper assesses the scale of climate and disaster resilience support provided through CDD projects from 2001-11 and characterizes the forms of support provided. For the climate change adaption and disaster risk management (DRM) practitioner, it discusses the characteristics of a CDD approach and how they lend themselves to building local-level climate resilience. For the CDD practitioner, the paper describes the types of activities that support resilience building and explores future directions for CDD to become a more effective vehicle for reducing climate and disaster risk.
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