- Bank programs have been tailored toward significant country needs in most MICs.
- As MICs' development challenges and demands have evolved ever more rapidly, the need for the Bank to be agile and responsive in its individual country strategies has become increasingly pressing.
- Relevance has been sustained by focusing on sectors important for countries' development, and bringing to bear a mix of knowledge, finance, and convening power
- The Bank's focus on growth has been successfully meshed with an equally appropriate attention to poverty
- Bank programs have been less germane in small states, non-borrowing countries, and when the Bank has been slow to respond to changing demands
MIC Borrowing Is Lower in Real Terms Than in the 1990s |  | | Source: World Bank database |
 Next: Effectiveness of the Bank's Country Programs |
Bank Programs Focused on Poverty have Enhanced Relevance | 
In Bulgaria, the Bank's antipoverty efforts emphasized improving institutions and the investment climate, with a secondary focus on pockets of poverty that exacerbated social exclusion. Clients found the Bank's institutional approach to be relevant because, rather than segmenting poverty issues, it astutely integrated them with achieving priority goals of growth and sustainable development. The approach to targeting pockets of poverty-found in depressed regions of the country suffering from de-industrialization, and among disadvantaged ethnic groups including the Roma-also enhanced the pertinence of the Bank's work. It did this by encouraging public-private partnerships and programs that built capability at the local level and hence contributed to improving the country's overall institutional capacity. | Source IEG (2007b) |
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