Most World Bank Group projects supporting trade facilitation reforms achieved their development objective, and all three institutions exceeded their corporate scorecard targets. 

• The World Bank’s investment lending appears to be substantially more effective than its policy operations.
• At the trade facilitation intervention level, the overall success rate averaged 79 percent.

While the World Bank Group’s achievements have contributed to lower trade costs and have generated associated benefits, a rigorous analysis suggests a more nuanced picture of what World Bank Group interventions work, where, when, and in what combinations:

• Successful trade facilitation reforms benefit from support to complementary areas of intervention and support over time. Yet, few projects are designed with such a systematic approach.
• In a context with diverse agency incentives and objectives, strong political support and active coordination play a pivotal role in ensuring the necessary level of integrated activity and information exchange to make trade facilitation successful. Yet, in practice, the World Bank Group has not systematically applied its tools for engaging with and coordinating among diverse stakeholders.
• Many trade regulations are intended to serve socially beneficial purposes such as enhancing public health, safety, and the environment, or reducing informality and corruption. However, insufficient attention has been paid to such objectives and only compliance costs are routinely monitored.
• Current sets of trade facilitation indicators generated and/or used by the World Bank Group each have their strengths, but also have weaknesses. Having two different rating systems can confuse or frustrate counterparts and clients.

More about how IEG assessed the Impact of the Bank Group’s Trade Facilitation Interventions

More about the Effectiveness of World Bank Group Support for Trade Facilitation (Chapter 3)

To build on its successful experiences in trade facilitation, IEG recommends that the World Bank Group should:

Promote an approach of complementary (simultaneous and/or sequential) interventions in trade facilitation reforms in countries where trade is a client priority and World Bank Group has a comparative advantage, substantiated by consistent diagnostics, to enhance the effectiveness of reforms.

Identify and mitigate political economy constraints to trade facilitation reform implementation through systematic application of its tools for stakeholder analysis and consultation (including public-private dialogue).

Systematically apply a risk-based approach to identify and monitor the public policy objectives of trade regulations relating to public health, safety, the environment, good governance, formality and the rule of law and specifically identify the stakeholders potentially impacted by the reforms and the extent of the impact.

Rationalize its own two major trade facilitation indicator sets to build on the virtues of each and to enhance their responsiveness to implemented reforms.

More about the Factors Influencing Performance of Trade Facilitation Reforms (Chapter 4)

See all Conclusions and Recommendations (Chapter 5)