An Independent Review of World Bank Support to ... - DAG Ethiopia

example, through SWAps), but in that case it would be important to ensure that a leaddonor has been identified who would maintain the on-going interaction with thegovernment authorities responsible for implementation of capacity building measures.6.13 The Bank should ensure that capacity building objectives established inoperations are based on solid technical approaches, proven in a similar institutionalenvironment. Some capacity building objectives in Ethiopia were not achieved becauseit was not clear to the Government exactly how they could be implemented. Integrationof the recurrent and development budgets is one such objective, for which operationalguidelines and successful examples are missing. Examples of how this has been achievedin similar environments where substantial parts of the development budget are donorfinanced,using different procedures, classification of expenditures and accountingsystems would have been useful.6.14 Training programs need to be followed up by tracer studies to establisheffectiveness. In spite of substantial support given to training by Bank-financedoperations, no tracer study was undertaken. Thus it was difficult to establish if thetraining was effective and whether trainees (i) actually completed the courses andobtained the degree/certificate, (ii) returned to the sponsoring government organizationafter end of training, and if not where they went and for what reason, or (iii) wereassigned positions and tasks through which they could make immediate use of new skillsacquired.6.15 Capacity building through relevant objectives/actions in macro-economic supportoperations should be clearly linked to the amount of support offered by the Bank. So far,such capacity building objectives/action have not been successful and have involveddelays and non-implementation of actions without consequences for the borrower. Moreand smaller tranches specifically focused on each of the components, or variable sizetranches decided on the basis of the degree of implementation of actions for each tranchecould be considered as alternative approaches.6.16 The objectives of the capacity building dimensions of AAA should be moreconcisely determined and agreed with the Government prior to implementation. Theexperience with the PER for instance shows that AAA work can go on for a protractedperiod without having a significant impact on building government capacities because ofa lack in clarity and common agreement on its purpose.36