Infrastructure: Lessons From the Last Two Decades of World Bank Engagement

The Bank has a new paper which is the title above.

This paper pulls together lessons from the last 20 years of World Bank engagement in infrastructure. It covers the energy, transport, telecommunication, water supply, and sanitation sectors, and the urban development thematic area. The Bank's infrastructure engagement over the past 20 years has yielded valuable lessons about project design and appraisal, poverty focus, private sector participation, environmental and social sustainability, the issue of corruption, and stakeholder communication. The report highlights the following lessons. A number of recurrent weaknesses in project selection and design prevented the achievement of an even higher rate of return in infrastructure projects. Demand estimates tended to be too optimistic, particularly when large price increases were needed to ensure the financial viability of the projects. The Bank learned the need to have well-designed surveys of intended beneficiaries to understand existing consumption patterns and public perceptions of the benefits from improved service quality. Reliance on standard engineering solutions sometimes led to over-designed systems that communities were unable to maintain. The Bank learned the importance of tailoring design to local circumstances. Excessive loan conditionality and project complexity lengthened preparation and implementation periods, and occasionally resulted in projects that "collapsed under their own weight." The Bank adopted a more disciplined approach to conditionality, streamlined its internal procedures, and changed the promotion criteria for staff to reward client responsiveness and results, not project complexity. Inadequate attention was paid to monitoring arrangements, statistical capacity building, and the links between project outputs and higher-order outcomes. The continuity of engagement suffered in some sectors and countries when the Bank's attention drifted away. The Bank learned that producing results goes beyond the quality of individual projects - it depends on the nature of the engagement between the Bank and the country, including its duration, depth and breadth.

The first thing i notice is that it's short. The bank is not known for it's brevity. There are loans that are only for a few million dollars and it reaches in the hundred of pages. Their research department and Operation evaluation Department is even worse. This report is just 72 pages. There is suppose to be a second volume but it doesn't seem to be up yet. But unless the other volume is 400 pages, this is evaluation project might get the award for being the shortest amount of work produced for such a long period that was being evaluated.

Anyway, the report has some good comments. I did read the first 20 pages and then skimmed the rest of it, but the best come from the Abstract. Read the abstract and you get the generally idea. I'm still shocked on how short this report was.

HT to PSD blog