Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2024
Chapter 1 | Introduction
Background and Audience
Results and Performance of the World Bank Group (RAP) 2024 presents an annual review of the Bank Group’s operational and country effectiveness that draws principally on evidence from the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG). This is the 14th annual report on the results and performance of the Bank Group. The report aggregates and interprets evidence related to the results and performance of the World Bank, which includes the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association (IDA); the International Finance Corporation (IFC), including IFC investment services and IFC advisory services; the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and Bank Group country programs.1
The main audience for RAP 2024 is the Bank Group’s Board of Executive Directors. RAP 2024 seeks to help readers understand performance ratings and factors linked to them as the Bank Group undertakes its Better Bank initiatives (box 1.1). The report also contains in-depth analyses that can assist management and staff with the ongoing design and support to the implementation of operations and country programs.
Throughout this RAP, we refer to three aspects of the ratings:
- Trends. We describe overall performance trends by key ratings and important subgroups. Like a Scorecard report, RAP 2024 presents trends, describes changes in trends, and provides a deeper analysis of specific issues based on the IEG validations of Bank Group self-evaluations.
- Challenges. Having described trends, we then identify challenges associated with performance, often in relation to subgroups. Challenges are persistent factors negatively linked to ratings. They are often drawn from institution-specific taxonomies because each institution responds to different kinds of challenges.
- Levers. Finally, we identify levers, which are actions within the Bank Group’s influence that management can take to address challenges or improve performance. Levers are also institution specific. Hence, a factor that appears as a lever for one institution may appear as a challenge for another.
Box 1.1. Relevance of Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2024 to the Better Bank Initiatives
Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2024 provides evidence of the Bank Group’s evolution toward becoming a Better Bank. The Better Bank initiatives implement changes in how the Bank Group operates, building on processes initiated by governors at the annual meetings in 2022 as part of the evolution. The initiatives for becoming a Better Bank seek to assist countries with navigating intertwined crises, tackling global challenges, and achieving the vision of a world free of poverty on a livable planet.
The findings presented in Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2024 relate to a cross-cutting issue and three of the main initiatives being undertaken within the Better Bank initiatives:
- A cross-cutting issue is the Bank Group reinforcing its commitment to support people and countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence.
- Joint country representation aims to enable truly integrated solutions that span both the public and private sectors, leveraging the entirety of our knowledge and experience and amplifying our collective impact.
- The operational efficiency and effectiveness initiative aims to quicken the pace and simplify Bank Group policies, processes, and systems.
- The World Bank Group Scorecard is a strategic management tool that is used to drive action for results.
Sources: Independent Evaluation Group; World Bank 2024c.
In this RAP, we systematically document trends, challenges, and levers for each institution as follows:
- Trends. Outcome ratings across the Bank Group’s institutions have not consistently increased over the long term, mostly because of changes in portfolio shares and shifts in ratings in challenging contexts.
- Challenges. The top challenges linked to performance include the following:
- World Bank: institutional capacity of implementing agencies and key stakeholders, operational design, project data and indicators, and financial management
- IFC: business risk, asset quality, economic issues and civil unrest, and declining development effectiveness ratings
- MIGA: cost overruns or construction delays, project company quality, and legal or regulatory risk
- Country programs: relevance, risk identification and mitigation, and support to implementation
- Levers. The Bank Group institutions have opportunities to reinforce performance by the following:
- Improving operational and project design (World Bank and IFC), which entails the One World Bank approach, ensuring appropriate preparation time and processing time (World Bank and IFC) and identifying and mitigating risks (World Bank and IFC)
- Ensuring client quality (IFC) and undertaking capacity building (World Bank and IFC), which entails developing adaptive management (World Bank and country program)
- Improving results monitoring, which entails recording more complete information (IFC and MIGA)
Objectives, Question, Scope, and Use
The objective of RAP 2024 is to identify trends in the Bank Group’s performance ratings, challenges that may constrain performance, and levers that can be used to improve performance. To meet this objective, the main question to be addressed by RAP 2024 is, What do IEG’s validations tell us about how the Bank Group’s performance changed over time and across subgroups?
The scope of RAP 2024 is based on the principles of continuity, symmetry, and innovation. Continuity is provided through standardization between RAPs, which allows for comparison of the Bank Group’s performance ratings across key breakdowns between 2020 and 2023. RAP 2024 continues to review performance over a 10-year period based on ratings from IEG validations and standardized methodologies undertaken previously for analyzing factors linked to performance. Symmetry is maintained within this report among Bank Group institutions through the analysis of trends, challenges, and levers. However, we acknowledge that the institutions are different in nature; therefore, perfect symmetry is not possible. Hence, we discuss certain topics in more depth for some institutions than for others. To innovate, RAP 2024 includes analysis of (i) project preparation time for the World Bank, processing time for IFC investment projects, and preimplementation scoping time for IFC advisory services projects; (ii) data from the Systematic Operations Risk-Rating Tool (SORT) for the World Bank; (iii) factors specific to work quality and additionality that are associated with development outcomes in IFC investment projects; (iv) the Country Opinion Surveys (COSs); and (v) levers related to outcome indicators and measuring results for IFC.2 Each innovation is defined, and we elaborate on findings in the chapters for the institutions.
RAP 2024 can inform learning and accountability. The evidence presented in RAP 2024 focuses on statistically significant changes and substantive patterns in performance relevant to the portfolio level, although it does not identify causal relationships. Drawing on this evidence, the Bank Group can use RAP 2024 for learning because it helps the Bank Group further examine the challenges linked to performance and the levers that can be pulled to enhance its portfolio. RAP 2024 aids accountability because it helps the Board understand trends and changes in portfolio performance. Being informed about past performance and the outlook for the portfolio helps the Bank Group make informed choices on investment. As with previous RAPs, the 2024 report does not provide formal recommendations based on its findings. Nevertheless, the identification of levers provides information regarding what the Bank Group can do to improve performance. In addition, to aid learning and accountability, a set of online charts for the World Bank accompanies this report, providing further breakdowns of data.
Methods
RAP 2024 applies a structured methodological design with the two main steps of data set construction followed by analysis. The three main data sets constructed across institutions relate to ratings, factors linked to performance, and outcome types. These data sets are the essential ingredients for the analysis of the RAP. In the second step, structured analysis is undertaken by drawing on a single or multiple data sets. The statistical analysis of the data sets includes both descriptive and inferential techniques. A text analysis of IEG evaluations and validations identified factors linked to performance, sentiments associated with their descriptions, and examples of challenges and levers. Supervised machine learning models were applied to automatically categorize text into factors linked to performance through logistic regression, transformer, and Naïve Bayes models. Appendix A provides full details on the sampling, data sources, and analytic methods used for RAP 2024 and their strengths and limitations.
Bank Group institutions use different frameworks and methodologies when rating operations. Outcome and performance ratings mean different things for the different institutions (box 1.2). Each chapter defines key ratings for the respective institutions. All rating methodologies align with good practice standards for evaluating public and private sector projects, as established by the Evaluation Cooperation Group of multilateral development banks (ECG 2012).3, 4
Box 1.2. Key Terms and Concepts in Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2024
Performance. The extent of achievement of key aspects of design, support to implementation, or results, based on ratings defined by the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, and for World Bank Group country programs.
Self-evaluation. A formal assessment of a project, program, or policy conducted by or for those in charge of the activity. In the Bank Group, self-evaluation takes the form of a systematic written account of the performance of a project or operation, with ratings assigned based on the criteria defined in guidelines to ensure comparability among reports.
Ratings. Ratings are quantitative summaries for assessing performance relative to an operation, a country program, or advisory services objectives. Ratings summarize the self-evaluation narrative into categories or values that enable aggregation.
Validation. The Independent Evaluation Group’s independent, critical review of the evidence, results, assessments, and ratings from self-evaluation.
Portfolio composition. The Results and Performance of the World Bank Group portfolio dynamics mirror those of a stock market portfolio. The portfolio consists of various subgroups, similar to a stock market portfolio. Changes in the allocation of operations among these subgroups (akin to stock positions) or their ratings (like stock prices) affect the weighted average of the overall portfolio. Consequently, the overall average rating shifts are determined by both shifts in subgroup ratings and changes in the portfolio’s composition.
Significance. A measure that indicates whether the results of a statistical analysis are unlikely to have occurred by chance, typically determined by a p value threshold (such as p < .05).
Sources: Independent Evaluation Group; World Bank 2021c, 2023e.
Organization of the Report
The report is organized into six chapters. Following this introduction, chapter 2 focuses on the results and performance of the World Bank, chapter 3 on the results and performance of IFC, chapter 4 on the results and performance of MIGA, and chapter 5 on the results and performance of Bank Group country programs. Each chapter examines performance trends, analyzes challenges, and describes levers. Chapter 6 provides concluding remarks on the relevance of the findings to the Better Bank initiatives. These chapters are complemented by appendixes that provide additional information and supporting methodologies.
- The institutions define performance differently, measure it differently, and call it by different names. We use the term performance as a shorthand to capture in a single word all the ratings relevant to these institutions for this report. Box 2.1 lists and defines the specific ratings.
- This year’s RAP notes challenges linked to results measurement of the World Bank and in country programs. However, we do not develop the challenges into levers in this RAP. Previous RAPs and IEG evaluations focused on results measurement systems (for example, The World Bank Group Outcome Orientation at the Country Level, Behind the Mirror: A Report on the Self-Evaluation Systems of the World Bank Group, and Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2023). This year’s RAP does not prioritize new analysis in these areas for the World Bank, unlike IFC. A planned early-stage evaluation by IEG will review developments linked to the Bank Group’s new Corporate Scorecard.
- The exception to this is technical assistance or IFC advisory services because the Evaluation Cooperation Group has yet to define these rating standards.
- There is no framework in IEG to consolidate and report the various performance ratings of the three Bank Group institutions on a single, uniform scale. Currently, the underlying criteria are incommensurable. The Bank Group has started to implement a new Corporate Scorecard, and changes in the Bank Group self-evaluation and IEG validation practices will be discussed as part of this and other Better Bank initiatives. Updates on the implementation of these reforms will inform future RAPs.