This Evaluation Insight Note (EIN) aims to contribute to the World Bank’s goal of supporting Domestic Revenue Mobilization (DRM) in client countries. It was guided by the overall question: What are the key issues that affected the ability of World Bank projects supporting DRM to sustain results? In answering this question, the EIN draws lessons from a detailed review of six Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) Project Performance Assessment Reports (PPARs) of closed World Bank projects supporting DRM in six countries – Pakistan, Guatemala, Panama, Croatia, Liberia, and Rio de Janeiro state in Brazil.

This systematic review provided the basis for four main insights on constraints around political economy and timing, the design of interventions, results frameworks, and coordination among development partners.  

• What Are the Lessons from the World Bank’s Support for Domestic Revenue Mobilization? 
• What Are the Four Main Insights from This Synthesis?
  1. In the operations reviewed, political economy constraints were identified and analyzed at the time of approval and, for the most part, reasonable mitigation measures were identified ex ante; however, tax reforms were still derailed.  
  2. Prior actions in development policy operations often benefited from being paired with investment projects or technical support from development partners.  
  3. Although coordinating with development partners was often discussed in project documents, in just a few cases was there extensive coordination, with mixed results.  
  4. Results frameworks to track progress on domestic revenue mobilization were often not well articulated, sometimes missing baseline or targets, being overly optimistic, or lacking clear results chains.
• Methodology

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