Evaluation

Evaluation Presentations

Full Evaluation Report

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is an agreement to continue to increase efforts for harmonization, alignment, and managing for development results. It includes a statement to eliminate duplication of effort and to rationalize activities to make them cost effective. On 2 March 2005, more than 100 countries and development agencies (including ADB and 19 of its developing member countries) signed it.

The declaration emphasizes that developing countries should be willing and encouraged to take the lead and have sovereignty in defining and prioritizing their development agendas (ownership). Donors should use and help strengthen the development strategies and systems of development partners (alignment).

Further, the activities of donors should be coordinated effectively to help curb the costs of aid delivery (harmonization), in consultation with development partners. Moreover, developing countries and donor agencies have a global responsibility to achieve results (management for development results). Equally, development partners must be prepared to share risks and accountability for ensuring aid effectiveness and improved results (mutual accountability).

In 2007, the Operations Evaluation Department in ADB assessed ADB's observance of its commitments to the Paris Declaration. This aimed also to describe ADB's tactics and inform the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will convene in 2008 in Ghana.

The conceptual framework, approach, and scope of the evaluation were pilot-tested in Indonesia and then applied to Bangladesh, Cambodia, Samoa, and Viet Nam. The scope was also expanded to include an examination of donor approaches and a review of OECD's 2006 Survey on Monitoring the Paris Declaration.

The study made no attempt to verify every partnering and harmonization process and activity that ADB engages in. It incorporated internationally-accepted methodologies and instruments, but recognized that these are work in progress. It accepted that generalizing from a selection of country and operational case studies and good practices has limits. And, it did not probe the cost-effectiveness of partnering and harmonization.

Naturally, the study confirmed that there is greater likelihood of capacity development support from development partners when a national capacity development framework, owned and led by the country, already exists.

Likewise, there is greater possibility of alignment between aid agencies, including ADB, and country systems if reform is led by the countries in partnership with the aid agencies. In ADB, the improved strategic approach to partnering and harmonization in the revised country partnership strategy guidelines has provided a framework for meeting declaration commitments at the country level.

Joint public expenditure reviews and fiduciary assessments allow ADB and other development partners to assess the risks and build up confidence in using country systems.

The study observed that ADB's involvement in national poverty reduction strategies and local harmonization action plans has helped define its comparative advantage and clarify the rationale for its strategic partnerships. Yet, ADB has limited appreciation of the benefits of partnering and harmonization. Also, the size of the ADB-donor partnership for harmonized approaches may vary at different stages of the project or program cycle.

The study noted, among others, constraints on partnering and harmonization activities with multilateral development agencies with memberships different from ADB's; promising operational approaches taken by ADB, such as the Five Banks Initiative on harmonized procurement, project preparation, and safeguards in Viet Nam; and the need to increase delegation of responsibility to and staffing of resident missions—they now face difficulty in fully participating in local harmonization action plan groups.

The study saw in ADB's approach to partnering and harmonization potential to engage with partners in a wide range of development policy, sectoral, and thematic areas. It appreciated ADB's high participation in 6 of 14 thematic working groups on harmonization, viz., the Operational Policy Roundtable, the evaluation group, the financial group, the managing for development results group, the private sector group, and the disbursement group.

To move the agenda forward, the study recommended that ADB clarify what qualifies and what does not qualify for meeting the declaration commitments, particularly for program-based approaches, and that it issue guidelines to staff in mid-2008.

ADB should also strengthen knowledge management systems to better capture, store, and share data and information on the processes and activities that support actions on the declaration, and to encourage learning and collaboration.

The study advised further that ADB should formulate criteria and categories for good practice in partnering and harmonization, and that it should disseminate these both within and outside ADB.

To promote actions on the declaration in country assistance programs, the study moved that progress reports on declaration commitments should be included in ADB's new country partnership strategies and in their mid-term reviews and completion reports.

The study suggested that with training and awareness building ADB can also ensure that its staff better understand ADB's commitments under the declaration.

In early 2008, the Operations Evaluation Department complemented the study with another. That study looked at the specific actions ADB must take to promote implementation and compliance with the commitments under the five pillars on which the declaration rests. It examined whether ADB is doing the right things and whether it is doing them right.