An Evaluation of the World Bank's Trust Fund Portfolio

CHAPTER 3THE RELEVANCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF TRUST FUND SUPPORT FOR DEVELOPMENTBox 3.5 Trust Funds Need Flexibility in Matching Aid Modalities to Country ConditionsThe EFA/FTI was established to provide support quickly and consistently with countries’own education sector strategies and programs. Sector budget support is therefore itspreferred funding modality. But this mode of support has not always proved appropriatein all cases, and EFA/FTI has in some cases adjusted to country circumstances.• In Rwanda, the government views EFA/FTI as “a model aid program” because itsfunding supports the government’s own education program and is deliveredthrough sector budget support using Rwanda’s country systems. While the fund ismultidonor at the global level, the government needs to interact with only thepartner managing the fund at the country level.• In Ethiopia, the major government education program receives project supportfrom a pool of financing including EFA/FTI, IDA, and other donor funds. Thoughquestions were raised in an independent evaluation of the EFA/FTI programabout the choice of project rather than sector budget support, this was the onlyviable approach under political circumstances that made donors unwilling toprovide direct support to the government, and it contributed substantially.• In Benin, EFA/FTI was provided as pooled sector budget support along with IDAfinancing, but the weak government consensus around an education strategy didnot warrant this type of support, and the program encountered significantimplementation problems.Sources: Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Benin case studies.3.24 Still, trust funds, like other sources of aid in these circumstances,have often run into challenges of very weak capacity on the ground,difficulties in interacting with other aid agencies, and tensions betweenshort-term and longer-term needs. In Aceh, for example, MDTF supportfor disaster reconstruction was successful in quickly and efficiently fillinggaps in the much larger amount of funding from the government,bilateral agencies, and NGOs. But because of differing government anddonor perspectives on how the trust fund should operate, it haddifficulty moving beyond initial relief and reconstruction to longer-termincome generation and capacity building projects—a change made in therestructuring of the trust fund in 2010 (Disch, Karlsen, and Vigeland2009).3.25 In post-conflict situations, trust funds have been particularlyimportant as a source of grant support in the absence of a nationalgovernment able to borrow from the World Bank or otherdevelopment banks. The achievement of objectives, however, hasbeen heavily constrained by weak environments and exogenousfactors. As a result, while individual activities have often achievedwhat was intended, there has been less success with programoutcomes overall. The two post-conflict case studies for thisevaluation, Timor-Leste and the West Bank and Gaza, and severalother externally evaluated cases illustrate both the considerablepositive contributions of trust funds under these specialcircumstances and the obstacles to overall success (see box 3.6).33