Country Assistance Strategy (CAS)

Guiding World Bank operations in Morocco

The Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) is the World Bank’s work plan that guides its operations in a country, usually for a period of three years. It describes the country's economic and social performance, its main development challenges, and a summary of the government's development strategy.

Objectives

The goal of the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) for the period 2005-09, is to help Morocco meet its key development challenges, notably :accelerate employment-generation and sustainable economic growth, andreduce poverty and marginalization. 
The CAS will focus upon four objectives:

• improve competitiveness and the investment climate;
• increase access to basic services by poor and marginalized groups;
• improve the efficiency of the education system; and
• improve water management and access to water services and sanitation.

The instruments of the strategy will move toward greater use of programmatic approaches, and the program is designed to mitigate risks that could affect the effectiveness of Bank support, and to enhance monitoring and evaluation of CAS outcomes.

  CAS (2005-2009) - Progress report

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What is a Country assistance strategy ?

The World Bank prepares a Country assistance strategy (CAS) for active borrowers from the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

The CAS takes as its starting point the country’s own vision for its development, as defined in a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper or other country-owned process. Oriented toward results, the CAS is developed in consultation with country authorities, civil society organizations, development partners, and other stakeholders.

The purpose of the CAS is to set out a selective program of Bank Group support linked to the country’s development strategy and based on the Bank Group’s comparative advantage in the context of other donor activities. CASs are designed to promote collaboration and coordination among development partners in a country. 

The CAS includes a comprehensive diagnosis—drawing on analytic work by the Bank, the government, and/or other partners—of the development challenges facing the country, including the incidence, trends, and causes of poverty.

The CAS identifies the key areas where the Bank Group's assistance can have the biggest impact on poverty reduction. In its diagnosis, the CAS takes into account the performance of the Bank’s portfolio in the country, the country’s creditworthiness, state of institutional development, implementation capacity, governance, and other sectoral and cross-cutting issues.

From this assessment, the level and composition of Bank Group financial, advisory, and/or technical support to the country is determined.

To track implementation of the CAS program, the CAS is increasingly results-focused. It includes a framework of clear targets and indicators to monitor Bank Group and country performance in achieving stated outcomes.