Acting on Recommendations and Learning from Lessons in 2007: Increasing Value Added from Operations Evaluation
 This report examines what actions were taken in relation to recommendations that the Development Effectiveness Committee, ADB's Management, and OED tabled in 2005–2006; what impact evaluation findings have had on recent Board proposals; and what steps OED can take to increase value added from operations evaluation. The latter include adhering to strategic principles, sharpening evaluation strategies, distinguishing recommendation typologies, making recommendations better, reporting evaluation findings in different formats, and tracking action on recommendations.
Special Evaluation Study on ADB's Approaches to Partnering and Harmonization: In the Context of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness
 The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is an international agreement to continue to increase efforts for harmonization, alignment, and managing for development results. This study assessed how well ADB has abided by its commitments as a signatory. The Learning Curves summarize the study's findings and recommendations.
Special Evaluation Study on Resident Mission Policy and Related Operations: Delivering Services to Clients
 This evaluation study assessed ADB's Resident Mission policy of 2000 and related resident mission operations as "successful", and recommended that ADB consider undertaking the preparation of a decentralization strategy. Read the Learning Curves.
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Special Evaluation Study on Policy-Based Lending: Emerging Practices in Supporting Reforms in Developing Member Countries
 Policy-based lending, known as program lending in ADB, was introduced to help developing member countries address balance of payments difficulties. At end-2006, program lending had absorbed 24% of ADB's total public sector lending, or $23.9 billion. Does experience bring good practices to light? Can ADB's program lending policy be improved? Read the Learning Curves.
Special Evaluation Study on the Effect of Microfinance on Poor Rural Households and the Status of Women
 ADB first offered microfinance services for the poor in 1988. By end-2006, it had approved 32 microfinance projects and 20 projects with microfinance components for 16 countries. Learn to what extent these reduced poverty in poor rural households and what potential microfinance holds to improve the socioeconomic status of women. Read the Learning Curves.
Country Assistance Program Evaluation for India
 India has made fast economic progress but still battles high levels of poverty. Since 1986, ADB’s operations have concentrated on infrastructure. How has ADB’s assistance performed? Was ADB's operational focus appropriate for supporting sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction? Read the Learning Curves.
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Special Evaluation Study on ADB's Support to Public Resource Management Program in India
 Between 1996 and 2004, ADB approved policy-based loans supporting implementation of fiscal reforms in four states of India: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, and Assam. Find out how ADB's assistance performed.
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Special Evaluation Study on ADB's Japan Funds: The Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction
 The Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction was set up in May 2000 to provide grants for innovative poverty reduction activities in ADB's developing member countries. As of end-December 2006, 90 grants had been approved in 20 countries. How well have they fared? How can future operations deliver more? Read the Learning Curves.
Special Evaluation Study on ADB’s Japan Funds: The Japan Special Fund
 The JSF was set up to help ADB’s DMCs restructure their economies in response to development challenges. Between 1988 and 2006, it financed 1,578 TA projects for $974.8 million. Find out in which areas the JSF performed well, which need improvement, and how the Fund might be administered better.
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Sector Assistance Program Evaluation on the Energy Sector in India – Building on Success for More Results
 The energy policy of India has been shaped by fast economic growth, but also by increasing household incomes, limited domestic reserves of fossil fuels, and environmental impacts. ADB and India partnered in the energy sector 20 years ago. What have been the results? How can ADB now promote energy efficiency, energy security, and energy conservation? Read the Learning Curves.
Sector Assistance Program Evaluation on the Transport Sector in India – Focusing on Results
 ADB and India have worked on transport for twenty years. As of end-2006, ADB had made 25 loans totaling $5.28 billion to the transport sector of India, or about one third of ADB's lending to the country. How has ADB's assistance performed? What strategic positioning should it adopt now? Read the Learning Curves.
Country Assistance Program Evaluation for Sri Lanka: Inclusive Development and Conflict Resolution: Major Challenges for the Future
Sri Lanka is a middle-income developing member country with high social indicators, though its social accomplishments have not been accompanied by significant poverty reduction. An evaluation of ADB's country strategies and programs for Sri Lanka, covering the period 1986–2006, identified inclusive development and conflict resolution to be the major challenges. Read the Learning Curves.
Special Evaluation Study on ADB –Global Environment Facility Cofinanced Projects: Performance and Process Evaluations
 ADB's association with the Global Environment Facility began a dozen years ago. ADB's GEF portfolio is small, young, but growing. It includes the Sundarbans Biodiversity Conservation Project in Bangladesh, the Protected Area Management and Wildlife Conservation Project in Sri Lanka, and the Technical Assistance for Prevention and Control of Dust and Sandstorms in Northeast Asia. What are the lessons of experience? Read the Learning Curves.
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Special Evaluation Study on ADB's Energy Policy Review 2000
 The Asia and Pacific region's consumption of the world's total primary energy supply grew from 13% in 1973 to 25% in 2003. It is expected to rise by 89% and account for 30% of the world's by 2030. How can this demand be met in the most cost effective and environmentally sustainable manner? How might ADB help? Read the Learning Curves.
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Learning Lessons in ADB
 A new publication connects operations evaluation to ADB's knowledge management framework to facilitate lesson learning in OED, other departments, developing member countries, and the international evaluation community.
Independent Evaluation at the Asian Development Bank
 OED's anniversary publication presents the evolving role of evaluation in ADB—from its early years to the expansion of OED's activities in response to a broader mandate. Timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of ADB's establishment in 1966, Independent Evaluation at ADB also describes recent OED accomplishments and offers a look at the future of evaluation in ADB.
India: Promoting Urban Social Development through Self Help Groups in Karnataka
 This case study is one of the first on urban female Self Help Groups in India. It evaluates a self help group program, facilitated under the ADB supported Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development Project (1996–2004). Covering 23,324 families living below the poverty line, the Self Help Group program proved an effective instrument for providing 722 women groups with some opportunities to save effectively, and also with collective access to services of different governmental schemes that were earlier usually denied them.
Evaluation of Rural Water Supply and Sanitation in Indonesia
 At the start of the 1990s, only 40 million of the 130.5 million of Indonesia’s rural population benefited from water supply and sanitation services. Among other objectives, the Project aimed to provide safe, adequate, and reliable water supply and sanitation services to 3,000 low-income communities in the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra. The Project was rated partly successful, bordering on unsuccessful.
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Selected Technical Assistance Projects in Public Administration in the People’s Republic of China
Since the early 1990s, ADB has assisted the People’s Republic of China to undertake reforms in the fields of audit, procurement, and performance evaluation. Five of the 12 TAs approved for these areas were evaluated, with mixed results. Issues included the opportunity provided by recent changes to PRC procurement regulations for ADB and the World Bank to review the use of country systems, innovations in PRC should be shared with other developing countries, and strengthening existing systems and procedures would be beneficial in fighting corruption.
Social Protection Sector Development Program in Indonesia
 During the 1997 Asian economic crisis, the Government of Indonesia was faced with the prospect of rapidly growing numbers of people falling into poverty, and a reversal of social development progress achieved during the preceding two decades. Combined with the severely constrained government budget, the impact of the crisis had the potential to make access to basic social services difficult for the poor and vulnerable groups. The purpose of the Program was to reduce impoverishment caused by the 1997 Asian economic crisis, while introducing sector reforms to strengthen social services delivery in anticipation of decentralization. The Program is rated successful.
Evaluation of the Health and Population Project in the Republic of Marshall Islands
 The project was the first ADB intervention for the health sector in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. It aimed to support the Government to shift the emphasis of health service provision from expensive curative services to preventive services based on a primary health care approach. Evaluation results showed that the participatory, community-based model of PHC, which the project sought to promote, may have been unrealistic.
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Special Evaluation Study on Performance of Technical Assistance
Several reviews and evaluations carried out over the last decade found that ADB technical assistance (TA) had not reached its full potential in achieving development results, and identified concerns over the approach to TA management and the effectiveness of many TAs. This evaluation study undertook an assessment of past reviews and evaluations, an analysis of the evaluation database on TA performance, and country case studies of purposefully selected sample TAs in selected sectors. Overall, the evaluation rated ADB’s TA operations as partly successful.
Country Assistance Program in the People’s Republic of China: Success Drives Demand for More Innovative and Responsive Services
 This second country assistance program evaluation for the People’s Republic of China covering ADB operations from 1998–2005 is prepared to provide directional inputs to the forthcoming country partnership strategy paper of 2007. It focuses on the strategic and institutional aspects of ADB operations in the PRC, and on key operational thrusts in lending and non-lending operations.
PRC is now a middle-income developing member country, and the services that worked well over the past several decades are not perceived to add comparable value for the future. PRC success has driven demand for more innovative and responsive services—the theme of this evaluation. A future challenge for ADB, at both institutional and country levels, is responding to varying assistance needs of PRC given its solid portfolio of projects and strong record of economic accomplishments.
Chengdu-Nanchong Expressway Project in the People’s Republic of China
 The Chengdu–Nanchong expressway was a priority section of the national trunk highway system. It runs from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, to Nanchong, a municipality in the poorer, eastern part of the province. The Project aimed to promote economic and social development in the southwest of the People’s Republic of China, and it was rated as successful.
Social Sector Program in Thailand
 Before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Thailand was viewed as a model of sound economic management. The crisis caused a liquidity crisis in the country. The Social Sector Program was designed and formulated expeditiously to help the Government of Thailand mitigate the immediate negative social impacts of the financial crisis on the poor and vulnerable groups and to lay the basis for strengthening the social sectors in the longer run. The Project is rated partly successful.
Selected Technical Assistance Projects in Public Administration in the People’s Republic of China
Since the early 1990s, ADB has assisted the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to undertake
reforms in the fields of audit, procurement, and performance evaluation. Five of the 12 TAs
approved for these areas were evaluated, with mixed results. Issues included the
opportunity provided by recent changes to PRC procurement regulations for ADB and the
World Bank to review the use of country systems, innovations in PRC should be shared with
other developing countries, and strengthening existing systems and procedures would be
beneficial in fighting corruption.
Changchun–Harbin Expressway Project in the People’s Republic of China
The Changchun–Harbin Expressway was a priority section of the national trunk highway system. The expressway project was to serve as the link between existing expressways in the northeast corridor section, and complement and enhance previous investments. The Project aimed to promote economic growth in northeastern PRC and was in line with ADB’s strategic objective of promoting growth and reducing poverty. Overall the Project was rated highly successful.
Primary Health Care Project in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
 This study evaluated the performance of the first ADB health intervention in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The Project was aimed at supporting the Government’s health policy, adopted in 1993, to improve basic primary health care services particularly in the villages. The Project is rated as successful.
Rural Microenterprise Finance Project in Philippines
 This report evaluates the performance and achievements of the ADB’s loan to support the Government of the Philippines’ efforts to strengthen rural financial institutions by assisting organizations that employed the Grameen Bank approach in providing credit to the poor.
Tuvalu Islands Development Program
 This report evaluates the performance of ADB’s first loan to Tuvalu. The $4 million program loan was approved in 1999 and was designed to support the devolution process by setting up a trust fund specifically for the outer islands. A consistent finding of the evaluation is that ensuring widespread and appropriate participation in and ownership of development programs, especially reforms, is crucial to their success.
Nghi Son Cement Corporation in Viet Nam
 ADB’s first private sector project in Viet Nam for the Nghi Son Cement Corporation was rated successful. The report showed that the strong commitment of the sponsors and effective coordination of ADB’s public and private sector operations with local governments were needed to achieve development objectives.
Hebei Roads Development Project in People’s Republic of China
 The Hebei Roads Development Project is the ninth road project financed by ADB in the northern and eastern part of the People’s Republic of China. Apart from civil works, the Project included additional features which are now embedded in the scope and implementation model consistently adopted for ADB-financed expressways in the PRC. It was the first to include a poverty reduction component, which integrated the expressway with the nearby road network, based on preparatory work reinforced by successful application (also first time in a PRC expressway) of participatory rural appraisal techniques to identify and select local roads with greater poverty reduction impact.
Industrial Energy Efficiency Project in India
 Investments in energy efficiency improvements in India had not been as much as expected. This Project sought to address this by providing energy efficiency financing through a financial intermediary equipped with developed capabilities for such activities. The Project was rated partly successful in promoting energy efficiency in the energy-intensive industries in India.
Irrigation and Flood Protection Rehabilitation Project in Viet Nam
 Irrigation and flood protection infrastructure in northern Viet Nam was old and often dilapidated when the Project was formulated in the early 1990s. The Project’s objective was to rehabilitate 45 kilometers of the Hanoi dike and two irrigation systems with an irrigated area of 80,000 hectares in North Central region. The Project is rated successful.
Second Industrial Energy Efficiency and Environment Improvement Project in the People’s Republic of China
 The industry sector is the largest energy user in the People’s Republic of China. This project was a continuation of ADB’s efforts in the country to promote sustainable improvements in energy efficiency in the most energy-intensive industrial subsectors with substantial environmental benefits. The Project was rated successful.
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Tonga Outer Islands Agriculture Development Project
 This $3.64 million project was approved in 1995 to support agricultural development efforts on the outer islands of the Kingdom of Tonga where poverty is more widespread and income-generating opportunities more limited. It was rated as unsuccessful.
Private Sector Infrastructure Facility in India
 This report evaluates the performance and achievements of ADB's loans to the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Limited and Industrial Finance Corporation of India Limited in promoting private sector participation in infrastructure development; attracting private capital through long-term debt financing; and promoting a policy dialogue establishing an appropriate regulatory framework.
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Second
Financial Sector Program in the Lao PDR
ADB has been supporting financial sector development in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic since 1988. This was initially done through technical assistance and through the first financial sector program loan which facilitated the establishment of a market-oriented economic system. This second financial sector program was rated partly satisfactory, bordering on unsuccessful by the evaluation.
Road Rehabilitation Project in Kazakhstan
The breakup of the Soviet Union led to major transition challenges for the road sector in Kazakhstan, a large, landlocked country which provided strategic transport links between Russia and the Central Asian Republics. Lack of maintenance caused road conditions to deteriorate. This report details the findings of an evaluation of ADB’s first support for the transport sector in Kazakhstan and also the first road investment in the country supported by an international financial institution.
Financial Sector Program and Institutional Strengthening of the Financial Sector Project in the Republic of Korea
The Korea Financial Sector Program Loan, intended to address some of the adverse impacts of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, was unique: it was the largest loan ever approved by ADB; its design was not framed by a country strategy because Korea had already graduated from ADB’s lending program for nearly a decade; and the emergency loan was processed in record time as it was essential for ADB to respond quickly as part of a $21 billion international rescue effort. This report evaluates the performance and achievements of this key crisis management intervention which reveals lessons for future ADB response to similar crisis situations.
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