In line with the World Bank’s operational policy on Development Policy Financing (OP 8.60), disbursement of a multi-tranche loan is conditioned on: (a) satisfactory implementation of the program supported by the loan, including compliance with the program’s tranche release conditions; and (b) maintenance of a satisfactory macroeconomic policy framework.
... See More + This document summarizes the progress made to the tranche release conditions (TRCs) for the release of a US$210 million Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) grant under the Incentive Program Development Policy Grant to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The Program is supported by a SDR 62.6 million (US$90 million equivalent) IDA grant and a US$210 million grant from the ARTF. The IDA financing was approved by the Executive Directors on June 14, 2018 and the ARTF grant financing was approved by the ARTF Management Committee on July 9, 2018. The Program has been progressing on track. The first tranche of US$90 million of IDA grant is associated with three prior actions and was released on September 6, 2018 upon the Program’s effectiveness. The seven TRCs for the release of the seven tranches of US$30 million each of ARTF grant have been met by the Borrower. In addition, the Bank finds the macroeconomic policy framework of the Borrower satisfactory and consistent with the objectives of the Program for the purposes of releasing the tranches associated with the seven TRCs of the program.
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The IDA18 replenishment arrangements provide that IDA country allocations be made available for information to IDA’s Executive Directors and disclosed on IDA’s external website at the end of each fiscal year of the IDA18 implementation period.
... See More + This note responds to these disclosure commitments by providing: (i) FY18 core IDA country allocations (Table 1) with key input data on which the FY18 country allocations were based (Table 2); (ii) non-core IDA allocations under the Regional Program (Table 3), the Refugee Sub-Window (RSW) (Table 4), the Crisis Response Window (CRW) (Table 5) and the Scale-up facility (SUF) (Table 6).
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We revisit the relevance of the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA)against growth performance, with attention to possible biases arising from qualitative andquantitative changes in the CPIA methodology.
... See More + The CPIA, introduced in the late 1970s, had aseries of extensive revisions in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, placing more emphasis oninstitutional capacity and social policies. We reexamine a claim by previous studies that the CPIAis weakly relevant for economic performance, by running cross-country growth regressions with apanel dataset covering 146 countries between 1995 and 2015, a period over which the CPIA iscomparable. By addressing the possible biases arising from the methodological changes, we showthat the CPIA is a good predictor for future growth.
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The Financial Reporting and Oversight Improvement Project of Malawi had a substantial overall outcome, an unsatisfactory performance by the Bank and the monitoring and evaluation quality was negligible.
... See More + The lessons learned were: (1) Complex procurement activities, such as a new IFMIS, require extensive support and a deep technical expertise to be effective. (2) Using composite indicators like PEFA should be avoided for M&E purposes and should introduce intermediate indicators at the beginning of the project. (3) Changes in the direction or emphasis of a project need to be clearly communicated to all stakeholders after any significant events that impact the project. (4) In projects with multiple activities that need proper sequencing and include a capacity-building component, implementing units should be encouraged to hire TA to support implementation. (5) On complex projects or on projects where the factors outside the project make a major impact on the project during implementation, TTLs must have a constant field presence and take full advantage of opportunities to restructure the project. (6) M&E should be a primary focus of any project and its application needs to be continually reviewed.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR4541 NOV 30, 2018
This paper investigates the impact of World Bank development policy operations on the quality of economic policy during the period 1998-2015. A new theoretical framework distinguishes among three effects that have been conflated hitherto: (a) marginal impacts of additional policy actions within the current year; (b) length of the policy engagement with client countries, and (c) changes over time in the marginal impact of policy actions.
... See More + The analysis focuses on policy actions that are particularly relevant for the quality of economic management. Consistent with past research, robust panel estimations indicate that development policy financing has a positive effect on the quality of government economic policy. The econometric work suggests that the nature of the policy dialogue and quality of the engagement with government matter more than the sheer number of policy actions adopted. There is also tentative evidence that although the positive impact is sustained over time, the initial years of an engagement are the most productive for improvement in government economic policy. This may be linked to the fact that over time the reform program changes from 'first-generation' to more complex 'second-generation' policy actions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8645 NOV 13, 2018
