The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), calling itself Barbados’ “main development partner, is evaluating the millions of dollars in assistance it has provided to Barbados over the past three years.
It is part of a Country Programme Evaluation process being done by the IDB’s Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE), acting on the instruction of the financial institution’s executive board. Similar exercises are being conducted in the Dominican Republic and Paraguay.
According to information from the IDB, an evaluation team led by Leslie Stone and including Michelle Fryer, Hector Valdes Conroy, Lynn Scholl and Ricardo Marto, started their work in July last year, and held discussions on the matter with the executive board in January.
In the process, the bank has been examining a number of things including the effectiveness of the Country Programme and identifying lessons learned, the current (2010-2013) country strategy, country programming documents, loan proposals, monitoring and completion reports, project evaluations, and “other relevant material produced by the bank and by the executing agencies”.
The IDB said it was also analysing Barbados’ medium-term national priorities and would peruse “data from national and international databases, Barbados’ long-term strategic plan 2006-2025, the country’s Medium-Term Development Strategy and Fiscal Framework 2010-2014, sectorial plans and programmes from the government, bank documents, and “other relevant studies and reports from development partners, universities, civil society organisations and think tanks”.
“To answer the evaluation questions, OVE will conduct an extensive desk review of documentary evidence provided by the bank, Government sources, and development partners,” the organisation explained.
“Specific information about the relevance of the bank’s country programme, policy dialogue, and execution challenges will be garnered from interviews with bank staff at headquarters and in the country office, government officials, executing unit staff, civil society, and the donor community. In addition, OVE will conduct one mission (possibly two) to the country to analyse the operational portfolio, engage in site visits, collect relevant data, and validate results.”
The IDB said the review was “the third independent evaluation” of the bank’s country programme with Barbados, that the first one covered the period 1989 to 2004 and focused on the strengthening of Barbados’ brand as a tourism destination, while the second one covered the period 2005 to 2009, which was “a period of increasing demand for water and electricity”.
The latest CPE has been conducted in a period “characterised by fiscal pressures and decreasing tourism receipts”, it observed.
“OVE will analyse the bank’s relevance, positioning and effectiveness in this context of Barbados’ specific development challenges – such as economic and climate vulnerability arising from its small size, economic vocation, and location. Furthermore, previous CPEs identified significant delays in loan execution, which may seem paradoxical given the country’s level of development and the bank’s continuous support in specific sectors. This is a key issue this CPE will analyse.”
The bank said the process was intended to strengthen several “dimensions”, including ensuring “a closer link between the discussion of the country context and the evaluation of the country programme relevance”, the bank’s results in specific sectors, and “other cross-cutting issues related to implementation and effectiveness”.
“Depending on country circumstances, these may include topics such as: the adequacy and use of lending instruments and knowledge products; the bank’s support for the use of national systems (fiduciary, safeguards, monitoring and evaluation); the quality of the portfolio’s monitoring and evaluation systems; and the overall performance of the country’s portfolio.”