Improve the evidence-base related to electricity access and its alignment with the corporate goals of promoting shared prosperity and ending extreme poverty.
(A) At the project level, (i) design results frameworks for electricity sector projects that go beyond simple headcount measures of access grid, off-grid, SHS, end-uses served to include attributes such as quality, reliability, affordability of service and (ii) where joint Bank Group projects are undertaken, assess value-added of such joint projects to the private sector and country clients. (B) At sector and country level, help country clients to appropriately enhance their M&E systems, household surveys, census and
similar undertakings to measure and monitor the economic, welfare, and gender-related outcomes from increased electricity access. (C) Across country clients, promote uniformity and comparability in indicators, and help improve country capacity for designing, implementing, and utilizing the
M&E frameworks.
Monitoring and evaluation show weaknesses in all elements of design and implementation. This weakness is more marked in low- and medium-access countries, largely due lack of indicators, weak baseline data, and inadequate capacity for monitoring. The shortcomings are highest regarding the tracking of economic and welfare outcomes, including gender considerations, but there has been greater recognition of this matter in the World Bank and recent improvements in M&E frameworks in this regard. However, IFC and MIGA do not have any significant provision for tracking the welfare and gender outcomes related to their operations.
Collaboration among World Bank, IFC, and MIGA through joint projects has grown over the years, albeit in an ad hoc manner. Feedback from both internal and external stakeholderspoint to a number of areas for improvement. In order to take effective action in this area, more and solid evidence is needed on the value added as well as on costs and benefits to private sector clients from such joint projects.
IFC: Partially Agree. Management is committed to advance the evidence on results and impacts of electricity access, including its contributions to the WBG goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. To this end:
(i) The Bank will apply the SE4ALL Multi-Tier Framework for measuring electricity access. The framework will be used to: (a) measure country progress towards universal access under SE4ALL and (b) track project contributions, starting with a pilot group of energy operations to be implemented in FY16, and expanded afterwards. In addition, efforts will be made to facilitate the adoption of the framework by other parties to ensure consistency of reporting under SE4ALL and to assist clients to adopt a simplified version for their own tracking.
(ii) The Bank will continue mainstreaming impact evaluations in the selected energy access operations.
The specific recommendation to assess "value-added" of WBG joint projects to the private sector clients and the countries would not be feasible in the absence of counterfactuals and the absence of a WBG-wide methodology for such an assessment.
IFC will continue to implement across sectors its eight-point action plan that resulted from IEG's evaluation on IFC's Poverty Focus, over a three-year timeframe. IFC will carefully take stock on its evidence-base in relation to the corporate goals across sectors and examine and discuss the next steps for improvement.
Action 5: IFC to conduct evaluations of select power sector interventions with the objective of upgrading knowledge of electricity sector contribution to economic growth and job creation
Indicator 3: Number of evaluations related to electricity access and economic growth / job creation.
Baseline: 2 evaluations
Target: 4 evaluations
Timeline: FY 19
IEG notes the completion of the Turkey impact evaluation study framework for the power generation sector to better assess project outcomes and market level contributions global mapping of electric supply industry and transmission and distribution (T&D) companies and the input-output multiplier model to estimate the impact of increased electricity access to employment and economic growth with relevance for low access countries. IEG also notes the technical briefing to the WBG Board on IFC's evolving approach in the context of market trends and technological changes to fill the investment gap in the power sector. Projections of beneficiaries in projects in Myanmar, Sierra Leone and Pakistan are also noted. The attachments mentioned in the management's update do not appear to have been included. Please re-attach them information.
This fiscal year, we completed the economic impact evaluation of IFC's investment in power sector in Turkey and disseminated the key findings of the study both internally (to IS and AS staff) and externally (final report attached). As part of IFC's new anticipated impact measurement and monitoring (AIMM), we have developed a framework for power generation sector to better assess not only the project outcomes (both direct and indirect) but also its market level contributions. IFC has also developed internally an input-output multiplier model to estimate the impact of increased electricity access to employment and economic growth, particularly relevant for those low access countries where IFC's investment contributes to relieving energy capacity constraint.IFC takes note of IEG's recommendation on focusing its evaluation in the low access countries. To this end, we were planning to undertake an evaluation of IFC's investment on Bujagali Hydropower project (Uganda) but UK's CDC group completed a similar study (see attached the report). There is also extensive empirical evidence on strong correlation between increase access to energy and jobs and economic growth in low access countries and hence IFC has refocused its efforts in further refining its strategy and better understanding the electric supply industry (including transmission and distribution) for effective intervention. In this regard, IFC has undertaken a deep dive on its power sector strategy and made technical briefing to the WBG Board, which was well received( the presentation attached). The deep dive was intended to showcase the market trends in the sector, IFC's evolving approach in the context of these trends and technological changes, and to scale up its investments and mobilization to fill the investment gap in the power sector. Given that efficient transmission and distribution subsector is critical for effective delivery of electric services to both households and industries, IFC has also completed a study on global mapping of electric supply industry and transmission and distribution (T&D) companies to better understand the status of T&D sector and the potential for private and IFC investment (final report attached). In addition to the three completed studies noted in last year's update, IFC has now completed two more studies (the deep dive and global T&D mapping) thereby exceeding the initial target of four power studies by FY19, and bringing the total number to five.In FY17, IFC committed a total of over US$1 billion in power generation sector in IDA and FCS countries including Myingyan IPP (Myanmar) in country where about 75% of the population did not have access to electricity and once completed, it is expected to increase access to energy for around 5 million people. IFC also supported Karot Power(Pakistan), IFC's largest single renewable energy to date, generating 2,970 gigawatt hours (GWh) of net energy annually, reaching approximately 3 million people. Another notable example is IFC's investment along with IDA and MIGA in CECA SL Generation Limited (Sierra Leone) where electricity access rate is at less than 15% and one of the lowest in the world. The Project is expected to generate about 300 - 400 GWh/year on average over the project life (20 years) serving about 0.2 million people (approximately 3% of the total population).
IEG notes IFC's efforts that have been underway for some years, to better understand the economic impacts of its interventions in the power sector. IEG also notes the launch of an impact evaluation for Turkey, a high/universal access country. However, given the focus of the WBG's efforts in electricity access, it would useful to know IFC's plans and progress in similar exercises in low access countries and a timeline for these efforts.
IFC is committed to working on innovative approaches to better understand the economic impacts of its interventions in the power sector. As part of this effort, we have undertaken two broad streams of work over the past few years. First, a practical, input-output tool has been developed to quantify ex-ante economic growth and job creation effects of power projects for 20 selected countries. The country selection was based on: (a) number of current and historical IFC investment projects into the power sector of a specific country, (b) number of upcoming power projects in a specific country (based on the information from the pipeline), and (c) availability of recent Input-Output tables in the GTAP database for a specific country. We are now using this tool to estimate economic multipliers of IFC investments in the power sector and the estimates have been presented in Board Papers to illustrate the expected economic growth and employment impacts. Secondly, in depth ex-post evaluations of IFC in the power sector usually in cases where IFC has engagements at the sector level in a country. In FY16, IFC launched an economic impact evaluation on its investments in the power sector in Turkey where IFC made investments on both generation and distribution sides. IFC investments into the generation capacity represents about 5 percent of the country's installed capacity. The main objective of the study is estimate the direct, indirect and induced effects of increase in power capacity on employment and GDP and this study is expected to be completed by the end of September 2016. In addition, IFC has undertaken a literature review of about 82 evaluations of major power sector projects to assess how power sector projects can potentially contribute to growth and job creation. Based on this, we have successfully reached three out of four evaluation targets.