Engage during stable times to build SSNs that can help countries respond effectively to shocks. This requires steady country dialogue and support for developing SSNs, whether by lending, country-specific AAA, or engagement in global knowledge and learning. As such shocks are transitory in nature, an important characteristic of an SSN is its ability to expand and contract to reach different population groups as needed. Access to reliable poverty data, crisis monitoring systems, and flexible targeting systems are elements to develop appropriate SSNs.
Original Response: Management agreed with the recommendation: The Bank's client countries need broad-based and flexible SSN systems that address chronic poverty and its consequences but can also be scaled up to protect the poor from economic shockswhether at global, country or household level. During the 2008-09 crisis, increased demand from clients and the extraordinary amount of resources deployed by the World Bank have helped to build a strong pipeline of activities that will persist into the immediate future, including in many countries that did not have prior SSN dialogue. The Bank will continue to provide client-driven assistance to respond to crisis situations, and to help countries build systems that alleviate chronic poverty, through its full menu of productsinvestment and policy lending (including new instruments, such as P4R), grants, and analytical activities. A key element of this would be capacity building and knowledge exchanges. These all will be financed through normal Bank budget allocations and supplemental seed funding from donors. It will also launch new activities focused on helping countries build greater capacity to respond to future crisis.
The Global Practice (GP) for Social Protection, Labor, and Jobs (SPL) has continued to be proactive in strengthening existing social safety nets (SSN) as it is developing new initiatives in other countries. In 2009, economic growth slowed substantially for low and middle income countries and the LAC and ECA region entered into recession. By 2010, growth rates had recovered. With the exception of MNA, the per capita GDP continues to grow positively. Since 2010, the SPL has taken advantage of this economic recovery to provide an increased amount of resources for SSN. Between the 2010 fiscal year to the 2012, the average yearly financing was US$2,384 million, which is nearly double the 2007 to 2009 period of US$1,284 million. In recent years (2013 to 2015), financing has slowed down but at US$1,421 million per year, it still is higher than the pre-crisis levels. This is supported by a future pipeline of projects, estimated to be around US$3,600 million in the 2016 fiscal year. Beyond financing, the GP has continued to provide technical support and has started dialogue with countries that have not previously received support. In recent years, the Bank has provided financial support and technical assistance to a large number of countries, including Bhutan, Namibia, South Sudan, Fiji, and Grenada among others. In many cases, such as Gabon or Myanmar, this represents the beginning of an engagement. The GP reports that there are now few countries where the Bank is not engaged in support to promote social safety nets. In addition to providing country level support, the Bank has continued to carry out regional and global forums. These include recent events in Monterrey and Berlin as well as a planned event in Beijing. All of these events brought practitioners from a variety of countries to discuss options for the strengthening of SSN. The GP is also working with other GPs to promote cooperation across the sectors, for example SSN in an urban setting. IEG endorses the GP's rating of high achievement of this recommendation.
Management has committed a continued support to all countries in building safety nets in a way that is appropriate and affordable. The WBG sustained the level of lending and technical assistance to the safety nets in post-crisis period (despite some slow down), with increase in FY15. The total number of SSN operations approved by the board now averages to around 50 per year, with lending volumes between 1 and 2 bln $. This is a significant steady support that is provided mainly to build capacity to respond to future crises in stable times. The number of TAs and ESW delivered in FY 15 is 50. The volume of lending and number of operations delivered in FY are presented in Tables 1 and 2 below. See attachment for Table 1 . Lending volume in new operations with SSN components (approved, by FY, mln. $) See attachment for Table 2 . Number of new operations with SSN components approved by the Board, by FY, count Among 47 approved projects in FY15 25 were mapped to the Social Protection board, and focused on social safety nets as the primary theme. Looking forward, there is a strong pipeline of projects on SSN: for FY16, 36 projects are slotted for the board with the total amount of new lending of $3.6 bln. (of which 2.4 bln in IDA). Another way to present the progress made is to look at the new commitments to Social protection theme (Table 3). See attachment for Table 3. SPL (New) Commitments (including grants), mln $ This sustaining and even expansion of the portfolio has been possible only with the increased demand form countries as mediated by the country directors attention to the development of safety nets and increased BB allocations to the topic. The SPL practice made consistent efforts in influencing the country management units though the strategic discussions (Systematic Country Diagnostics), and engagement in policy dialogue. Several examples of this turn around in FY15 attitudes are worth mentioning and they span a range of regions and income levels. In Romania, there has been an engagement with the Government over preparing a multi-year comprehensive social inclusion strategy, a complex task that initially met the skepticism of the country unit. Its successful delivery led to turn around in the client relationship and preparation of the Social protection system modernization project as means to implement the strategy with full support of the country unit. In Gabon, the country with no prior dialogue on poverty, the work on public expenditure review has opened a door to dialogue on social protection and social safety net assessment and increased interest form the country unit to the sector, previously overlooked. In Myanmar extremely limited capacity and resources pushed the work on social protection on the margins of the country program (with a tiny operational engagement over the stipends reform). The visit of GP Director in FY15 and meetings at the highest level of leadership in the country has galvanized the work of the sector and engagement from the Country Director. Cumulative effect of this portfolio expansion means that there is now only a handful of countries where the Bank is not actively present (through lending or AAA work), such as Central African Republic, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, or Marshall islands. Many new countries have been added in the recent 4 years, and these countries represent often acute vulnerabilities and need: South Sudan, Bhutan, Mauritania, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, Myanmar, Laos, Guyana, and Paraguay. Many small states are also included in the dialogue: Comoros, Vanuatu, Solomon islands, Fiji, St. Lucia, Grenada, Mauritius have active on-going collaboration on safety nets strengthening.
The World Bank continues to support new investment operations in SSNs after the crisis. In FY12, a total of 36 projects were approved (US$1.6 billion) and in FY13, the Bank approved 32 projects (US$1.3 billion). This represents a substantial increase from the pre-crisis levels and represents a continuation of support for the sector.
At the present, the World Bank has active social safety net engagements in 122 countries, in all regions. In around half of these countries (57), the Bank provides both investment and knowledge support. In 34 countries, the Bank only provides support through knowledge services, while in 31 it only provided financing. Overall, the World Bank provides knowledge services to about 75 percent of countries where it is active with Social Safety Nets. This includes strengthening support for low-income countries (such as Bangladesh and Ethiopia), middle-income countries (such as and medium-income countries, fragile and conflict states, and small states.
In some cases, the Bank is approving 'second generation projects, which represent continued support to the same country, for example in Mexico, Ethiopia, and Armenia. The Bank has been developing more flexible social safety nets, which often involves cooperation with other global practice. For example, the Ethiopia Productive Social Safety Net Project includes support in education, health, and agriculture and the Central African Republic Emergency Food Crisis Response and Agriculture Relaunch Project is being implemented through the Agriculture Global Practice.
In addition to the Bank's technical and financial support to social safety net projects, the Bank has continued to invest in knowledge and tools. The annual publication, the State of Social Safety Net provides detailed information on different programs, which can support the development and strengthening of programs. In addition, the Bank offers courses on building and monitoring social safety nets. The Bank has also provided support to strengthen the administrative systems of social sector protection systems, including both through technical assistance and its project. This support will help support the resilience of these systems during future economic downturn.
Overall, the recommendation has been fully adopted by the World Bank.
FY14 has demonstrated steady progress in helping countries to build safety nets to prepare to future shocks. The support took form of lending, grants, technical assistance, analytical activities, training and learning events, all focused on systems building and investment in capacity to deliver safety nets. At present, the World Bank has an active Social safety nets portfolio in 122 countries ain all regions, in 57 of which it is providing both financing and knowledge services, in 34 of which it is providing knowledge services alone, and in 31 of which it is providing just financing.
In FY14 alone 45 new projects were approved with the amount of lending close to 1 bl. Dollars. While this is lower than in the peak of the crisis-induced demands, both the number of projects and lending volumes remain significantly (more than twice) above the pre-2008 level, as demonstrated in Tables below. The sub-Saharan Africa, where needs for safety nets preparedness is the greatest, is now leading with the largest number of projects and the largest volume of lending, an historic change that is sustained since FY12.
Table 1.
Lending Commitments for Safety Nets, by region and fiscal year, FY07-FY14, mln.$*
FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11 FY12 FY13 FY14
SSA 93 38 224 269 102 612 412 428
EAP 8 51 182 1 13 261 120 173
ECA 10 91 274 569 1,066 352 66 150
LAC 121 47 2,356 527 2,083 84 284 92
MNA 19 24 12 116 31 151 71 27
SAR 193 22 300 150 212 90 353 100
Total 444 272 3,348 1,633 3,508 1,550 1,306 971
Number of Projects* with Safety Net Components, by region&fiscal year, FY07-14
FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11 FY12 FY13 FY14
SSA 7 4 11 17 13 14 11 16
EAP 1 1 4 4 4 2 2 7
ECA 3 5 3 17 13 10 4 6
LAC 6 6 9 12 13 5 8 4
MNA 5 6 5 6 5 4 5 6
SAR 7 2 6 3 6 1 2 6
Total 29 24 38 60 54 36 32 45
Including grants; all projects with theme code 54 (social safety nets).
This sustaining and even expansion of the portfolio has been possible only with the increased support of country directors to the development of safety nets and increased BB allocations to the development of .
Many of the activities were focused on systems building for LICs and Fragile states and are described in recommendations implementation update below.
In addition several activities explicitly focused on crisis preparedness. These included: Dissemination of the toolkit and synthesis note Building Resilience to Disaster and Climate Change through Social Protection across the world, an effort for preparing major international conference on the topic planned for November 2014 in Manila, active mobilization of the authorizing environment through the Annual inter-ministerial meeting on safety nets help during Spring Meetings of the WBG, and work in the Food security and systems pillar under G-20 (including major conference on the topic in November 2013).
While Bank support was high during the global financial crisis, support continued after the crisis and the Bank remains active in both improving existing social safety net systems and in developing new systems. This support includes IBRD countries with well-established social safety nets, such as Brazil and Colombia as well as IDB-eligible countries where the Bank is supporting new social safety nets, including Pakistan, Grenada, Cameroon, and Mozambique. In total, new lending was nearly US$3.8 billion for IBRD and US$1.2 billion for IDA in fiscal years 2010-11 and 2011-12 (see Table 1). In both cases, this represented an increase in both IBRD and especially IDA.
Volume of Lending in Safety Nets Projects, US$ Millions
IBRD IDA Eligible
FY07 127 313
FY08 116 144
FY09 2,739 601
FY10 963 581
FY11 3,007 415
FY12 782 769
This has been complemented both by ESW, focusing on strengthening the social safety net in a particular as well as technical assistance to policy makers. From FY2010, the sector had more than 60 AAAs that have 'social safety nets as their primary focus. Bank management has supported a number of south-south learning events and developed communities of practice, with both virtual and in person meetings, such as a meeting in Nairobi (Oct. 2012) as well as an online course (Dec. 2012).
Management has committed to continued managerial support to assist all countries to build safety nets in a way that is appropriate and affordable. Unlike in previous post-crisis periods (which saw rapid decrease in the volume of activities after the crisis-induced highs), FY13 was marked by a sustained level of lending and technical assistance. The total number of SSN operations in FY 13 in IDA has reached a record level of 50 in FY13, and IBRD operations also show a stability not seen in earlier post-crisis years. The number of TAs has increased to 30 in FY13 and in addition 20 pieces of ESW were prepared on safety nets. This sustaining and even expansion of the portfolio has been possible only with the increased support of country directors to the development of safety nets and increased BB allocations to the topic.
The Bank is enhancing the use of demand-driven grant financing from the first round Rapid Social Response (RSR) multi-donor TF. The RSR has served an extremely important role in breaking the cycle of low capacity, hence low demand in lower-income countries. It continues to provide catalytic resources in relatively small amounts, with grants ranging from US$40,000 to US$3 million, half going to sub-Saharan Africa. The progress in RSR has been rapid. In May 2011, the RSR approved 17 activities for a total amount of $10.44 million (of which 23% in AFR) in 13 countries, together with regional and global activities. As of May 2013, the number of countries supported by RSR reached 42 IDA countries with lowest capacity in social protection and 13 IDA countries with no or limited prior engagement in this policy area . In total, during the first three years, RSR, using US$61.5 million in resources, influenced and/or catalyzed US$2.26 billion worth of IDA resources for 38 projects in 32 countries. In Africa, RSR has helped to strengthen the pipeline for social protection projects, including 18 projects for US$1.124 billion IDA financing, and is supporting the implementation of six existing IDA-operations, worth US$563 million.
With generous additional funding from RSR's donors (Russia, UK, Norway, Australia and Sweden)with over $35 million in new funding committed by donors in FY13 alone, coupled with an extended life span until 2018, the trust fund is set to continue supporting the World Bank's 10-year Social Protection and Labor Strategy and sustaining engagement for Social Protection.
The Bank continued capacity building to sustain investment in safety net capabilities: expanded set of South-South learning fora and communities of practice for participants from LICs took place in FY13:
The Flagship Learning Forum 2012 Building Resilience and Opportunity in Hyderabad (India) (Oct 30 - Nov 3, 2012) drew more than 200 high level policy makers and practitioners from government institutions and international development partners to discuss how to use social protection systems in LICS to address employment challenge, especially for youth (http://go.worldbank.org/OTBYSHFBB0), and provided opportunities to share their experience in social assistance and labor policies.
Bangalore's (India) South-South workshop Implementing Social Programs - Better Processes, Better Technology, Better Results (Sept 4-6, 2012) was attended by delegates from 19 Asian countries and a number of donor agencies discussed key questions implementation of social protection programs (http://go.worldbank.org/C809DRFJI0), primarily on managing information systems.
The Communities of Practice around safety nets are continuing to grow. There are four active regional COPs in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Middle East and North Africa and Europe and Central Asia. The COPs interact bi-monthly via video-conferencing and hold at least one face to face event per year on key building blocks of safety nets. Interaction amongst practitioners within regions and across regions has been very vibrant with some countries emerging as thought and practice leaders (e.g. Turkey, Brazil, etc) who are willing to share their knowledge widely. Events are attended by senior policy-makers and technicians and there is very high demand for facilitation of bi-lateral exchanges following larger events. The AFR Cash Transfers (CTs) and Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) Community of Practice (CoP) completed the second face-to-face meeting (Oct 1-5, in Nairobi, Kenya) with over 100 participants from 17 countries. The learning event focused on strategies to improve targeting efficiency & coverage, implement innovative payment mechanisms, manage risks, coordinate service delivery, and design better evaluations to assess impact https://eteam.worldbank.org/spaces/2012HDNAFRCOP/). MENA community of practice on SSN was launched in early 2013. This is the first initiative in the region which facilitates direct peer learning. The SP Anchor has also been facilitating dissemination of good practice technical notes/briefs following the events.
The annual SSN core course was delivered in December 2012 with over 70 participants (50% from LICs), combined with on-line distance learning course on basics of safety nets (in partnership with FAO). This time the course included an extended module on SP systems and crisis preparedness.
IEG recognizes the strong focus on system development including systems that can be flexible to respond to shocks; the use of RSR for financing demand driven support to enable countries to focus more on crisis preparedness and its effort to mobilize more donor support for these efforts; and ongoing learning events to improve capacity and crisis resilience in countries. IEG's SSN evaluation pointed out that in countries with very little Bank engagement in SSNs, opportunities to improve country capacity and stimulate demand for SSNs is weak. The RSR has served an extremely important role breaking this cycle by providing grant support to countries that otherwise would lack county demand. Experience with the RSR has indicated that when countries are provided this support, they become more interested in further developing the capacity to respond to shocks. The steady engagement envisioned would require not only RSR to provide demand driven support, but greater Bank country support (via BB) for involvement on SSN development. This would enable a steady effort to build capacity that could then be relied upon in times of crisis. While the SP Sector has done an excellent job addressing crisis preparedness through a systems approach, a higher ranking for this recommendation would require greater buy-in from county directors as demonstrated by medium term programs of support for SSN engagement. IEG rates adoption of this recommendation as substantial.
The proposed 2012-2022 Social Protection and Labor strategy emphasizes continuing the move towards building country SP (including SSN) scalable and flexible systems to address both shocks and chronic poverty. Extensive consultations on the new strategy continued through-out 2011 and into 2012. The new SP&L strategy (including results framework) has been endorsed by CODE on March 14 2012. The Bank has been using demand-driven grant financing from the first round Rapid Social Response (RSR 1) multi-donor TF. RSR provides catalytic resources in relatively small amounts, with grants ranging from US$40,000 to US$3 million, half going to sub-Saharan Africa. This level of relatively small funding can effectively support system building efforts, which lead either to increased capacity to borrow for larger projects or to direct domestic resources to establish the building blocks of safety nets administration. The progress in RSR was rapid. In May 2011, the RSR approved 17 activities for a total amount of $10.44 million (of which 23% in AFR) in 13 countries together with regional and global activities. In October 2011, the RSR approved 17 activities under the final round of expression of interest, for a total amount of $6.7 million (of which 19% in AFR) in 10 countries. As of March 2012 the number of countries supported by RSR reached 44 and its full resources have been committed. RSR grants have also laid the foundations for larger country investments in safety nets. In two years, just over $23 million in RSR grants have been associated with IDA support for safety nets totaling over US$1 billion. During the year new countries that never had the dialogue on safety nets started activities with RSR support. To meet unfulfilled country demand, the Bank will also seek additional donor support for a second round of RSR (RSR 2). Donor consultations for second round of RSR (FY12-13) are on-going. The Bank continued to build capacity to enhance crisis resilience of client countries (LICs and MICs) through a South-South learning event in Ethiopia in May 2011 (between MICs and LICs clients), and through offering the Core Social Safety Nets training program targeted to the representatives of client countries and staff of donor agencies in December 2012 (attended by 90 participants). Following the training program, the network launched a Community of Practice, linking practitioners in different client countries with periodic videoconferences and on-line exchanges on key aspects of building blocks in SSN. In addition, the Bank, jointly with FAO, has launched a new distance learning course for practitioners on Social Safety Nets. Another South learning event is planned for the second half of 2012. Several briefings on crisis preparedness led to discussions with senior management on building safety nets to improve future crisis resilience- an effort which culminated in the preparation of the Development Committee paper on Safety Nets : 'safety Nets Work: During Crisis and Prosperity for the Spring meetings (March 2012). Management has committed to continued managerial support to assist all countries to build safety nets in a way that is appropriate and affordable.