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Evaluating Country Programmes
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directional guidance to institutional operations. They often failed to provide a basis
to monitor the implementation performance of the operational programme.
Subsequent to the preparation of its evaluation reports, the World Bank concluded
that its country assistance evaluations provide an important tool not only to
evaluate the country strategy but to examine more closely the impact and developmental
effectiveness of the Bank’s country-wide activities, including non-lending
services (economic sector work, policy dialogue and aid co-ordination). The evaluations
offer lessons and recommendations for the Bank’s regional staff and are often
timed to feed into the design of subsequent country strategies. Evaluation results
are concordant and show that weak institutional development is a key problem in
improving developmental effectiveness (see Box 5.1).
Although the benefits of country assistance evaluation may be substantial,
costs of undertaking these kinds of studies can also be significant. At the 1994 DAC
seminar, a survey of the cost of CPEs ranged from USD50 000 to as high as
USD600 000. The World Bank and IDB experience shows that costs can range from
USD10 000 to USD300 000 depending on the scope of work.
Box 5.1. Benefits of country evaluations
1. Country evaluations can identify and assess broad and long-term issues and
concerns better than other forms of evaluation. Institutional policies and practices,
cross-cutting issues and political dimensions can be aligned with assistance
objectives and project implementation, and shared with others.
2. They provide valuable information about the country strategy process,
whether project selection was based on merit, impact of non-project forms of
assistance, aggregating results of activities across all sectors and providing
input into, and strengthening, subsequent country strategies.
3. Country evaluations are better able to identify overall programme and project
delivery weaknesses, institutional difficulties, capacity utilisation constraints,
borrower’s acceptance, commitment and compliance to conditions and impact
of other donors and external factors.
4. They provide a framework for rating both the country’s and an institution’s
overall performance in meeting development goals and objectives, and better
assess impact and sustainability issues for long-term aid effectiveness.
5. They provide a valuable instrument for improving donor co-ordination among
institutions and bilateral agencies and for the broader participation goal of
increasing the role of national and local governments, civil society and the private
sector in the developmental process.
OECD 1999