2015 Guidelines for the Preparation of Country Assistance Program Evaluations and Country Partnership Strategy Final Review Validations

The Independent Evaluation Department (lED) has been preparing country assistance program evaluations (CAPEs) since 1998. Initially there were no formal guidelines on preparing these evaluations; the first such guidelines were prepared in 2006, and in 2010 they were revised and updated. In 2006, IED began validating Asian Development Bank (ADB) country partnership strategy final review (CPSFR) reports, which are prepared by operations departments. Since then these two types of country-level evaluation have been used side by side to assess country programs.

This second update of the guidelines builds on the methodological approaches of the earlier versions, adapting them to recent changes to ADB’s country partnership strategy (CPS) methodology and practices. In particular, it responds to changes made by ADB in 2013 to relevant Operations Manual sections. The new guidelines are also more in harmony with multilateral development banks’ (MDBs) good practice standards for country-level evaluations, and therefore strengthen the importance of CPS objectives as a core element in assessing ADB’s contribution to the achievement of development results. The update also simplifies aspects of the earlier guidelines, based on experience. Finally, the new guidelines update and formalize the 2011 draft CPSFR validation guidelines and combine these two country-level evaluation guidelines into one document. ADB Management initiated an update of CPS guideline in 2015 and IED will reflect any implications for update of these CAPE guidelines as appropriate.