Development Effectiveness Review 2011 Report

The review noted that rapid growth in Asia and the Pacific continued to reduce poverty and improve some social outcomes. However, data show wide gaps in attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, with weaker performance in poorer Asian Development Fund (ADF) countries. Overall, the trends in poverty and human development remain unchanged since the 2010 DEfR, although performance improved in most other development outcomes.

The review found that ADB had attained most of its operational effectiveness targets: ADB delivered more successful sovereign operations and technical assistance projects, greatly expanded cofinancing, and surpassed targets for promoting gender equity in projects. ADB also continued to advance its organizational effectiveness, allocating more staff to operations departments and resident missions, expanding budget efficiency measures, and increasing the proportion of women international staff.

The DEfR also identified weak areas: The quality of ADB's recently completed operations, including their delivery of core sector outcomes, remained considerably below target, and project delays and cancelations lowered the outputs to be delivered during 2009-2012 from ADF operations. To remedy these weaknesses, Management will ensure that the corrective actions adopted in 2010 and 2011 to improve project implementation and outcomes are implemented fully. The DEfR analyzes performance at the four levels of ADB's results framework: Level 1: The development progress Asia and the Pacific is making, Level 2: How ADB operations performed in delivering outputs and outcomes, Level 3: How efficiently ADB is managing its operations, and Level 4: How efficiently ADB is managing itself. The review assesses ADB's performance across its entire operations, as well as those funded by the ADF, its concessional financing source. Based on its findings, the review identifies actions to correct weaknesses.