In line with our mandate to review the World Bank Group’s performance, IEG conducts an annual review that tracks the Bank Group’s progress on achieving its development objectives.

Our latest review – the  2016 Results and Performance of the World Bank Group report – was released last week, and, overall, it shows that results mostly continue to remain below targets for different parts of the World Bank Group.

First, it is important to understand what the IEG report is about. Unlike traditional annual reports, which largely report on loans, revenues, expenses and other topline performance trends, IEG’s annual review looks at development outcomes – the extent to which World Bank Group projects and country strategies meet the development objectives that they set out at the onset. The latest report aggregates performance data on World Bank Group projects completed during FY13-15 and country strategies during FY12-15.

Although World Bank Group project appraisal documents may be notoriously long and detailed, one sentence – the “project development objective” – defines each project’s goals and lays the foundation for how IEG and World Bank Group project teams report on performance.  This statement of the objective becomes key language in the legal agreement between the Bank and the Borrower to implement the project, and, when a project closes, the team reports on the extent to which this objective was achieved. Using a standard methodology, IEG validates each completion report and the associated ratings, and adds the resulting data to its longitudinal dataset.  IFC projects go through a similar process, and IEG reviews a sample of closed IFC projects.

So what did we find?

For projects of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA) closed during FY13-15, performance remained essentially stable. (Explore these data here.)  The share of projects with outcome rated moderately satisfactory or above (MS+) was 72 percent for the FY13-15 group and 70 percent for the FY10-12 group.  Both were below the FY17 corporate target of 75 percent.  The volume-weighted share of MS+ rose from 81 percent for the FY10-12 group to 87 percent for the FY13-15 group, both of which exceeded the FY17 corporate target of 80% MS+ projects weighted by volume.  This improvement was driven by the good performance of a very small number of large-volume projects. The 15 largest-volume projects in the FY13-15 group accounted for less than two percent of the projects in that group but almost a quarter of the total volume, and all 15 were rated MS+.  

As for IFC, outcome ratings for IFC investment projects declined to 54 percent MS+ in the 2013-2015 review period, and ratings for advisory services also declined to 61 percent, both below the FY17 corporate target of 65 percent. Development outcomes of investment projects were driven by IFC work quality and IFC net commitment to projects.

The report also aggregated findings from IEG’s assessments of Completion and Learning Reviews of World Bank Group country strategies. With 66 percent rated MS+ on country development outcomes during FY13-16, performance remained below the FY17 corporate target of 70 percent. Lower performance was associated with poor results frameworks and as well as overambitious objectives.  Higher performance was associated with stronger country capacity as measured by CPIA rating and similar indicators.

The Results and Performance of the World Bank Group report aggregates existing data (rather than collecting new data), so this report often raises more questions than it answers. IEG uses these questions to plan upcoming in-depth evaluations.

What questions does the 2016 Results and Performance of the World Bank Group report bring up for you?  Let us know in the comments below.

Read the 2016 Results and Performance of the World Bank Group