Results Focus Sharpened

At the Second International Roundtable on Managing for Development Results, the presidents of five multilateral development banks and the chairman of OECD’s Development Assistance Committee encouraged all bilateral and multilateral agencies and developing countries to endorse the plan, designed to strengthen country capacity for managing results and to improve the effectiveness of assistance.

Jim Wolfensohn with AfDB president Omar Kabbaj

The plan lays out specific actions for donor agencies and developing countries to accomplish by the end of this year, from strengthening the statistical and planning capabilities of countries to organizing regional workshops to look at case studies and best practices.

"We have a fairly broad consensus now on what needs to be done. So the issue moves from the dialogue stage to implementation," Jim Adams, Vice President for Operations Policy and Country Services, told Today. "The question now is, how do we roll this out at the country level. We want results to be more broadly part of what the Bank does. This is not just a bureaucratic process; it will affect things on the ground."

The Marrakech Roundtable, with representatives from more than 50 countries and 20 international organizations, was a follow-up to the first such meeting in Washington in 2002. Co-sponsors were the five major multilateral development banks—the African, Asian, European, Inter-American and the World Bank—in collaboration with the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee.

The results roundtables have taken as their starting point the deal struck at Monterrey in 2002: developing countries must commit to improved policies and stronger institutions, while developed countries must deliver more and better aid, plus action on debt and trade. "It is precisely this shared responsibility for getting country outcomes that focuses the global agenda on managing for development results," said Ellen Goldstein, Manager of the Bank’s Results Secretariat.

Concentrating on results is not a new concept for the development community, said Wolfensohn. But, he added, "the focus is now shifting from project-based outcomes to determining how aid fits into national priorities and programs, how one loan or project in, for example, education will affect a country’s broader goals for that sector."

The results focus must drive the entire development process, Goldstein said, with desired outcomes agreed upon at the beginning of a project or strategy, monitored and benchmarked during implementation, and then evaluated afterward.

Key themes emerged from the two days of seminars in Marrakech. The first is that countries themselves must manage for development results; agencies’ success cannot be more than countries’ success. Second, development agencies must give the highest priority to strengthening countries’ capacity and reducing donor-driven burdens on countries. That means aligning their programs and support with countries’ national priorities, and harmonizing their requirements.

"This is important because development resources are scarce and their use must be optimized," said Fathallah Oualalou, Morocco’s Minister of Finance. "It will mean a change of culture. It’s a challenge for the developing countries as well as for the development agencies and developed countries."

Alignment, simplifying reporting, and focusing on results in all program phases are reflected in the core principles agreed in Marrakech. Endorsing those principles was the first point in the action plan for donors and developing countries. The remaining six actions are as follows:

• Focus national strategies and systems on country results. For the Bank, this means helping countries focus on results in their PRSPs and other strategy documents and establishing useful monitoring and evaluation systems.
• Align cooperation programs with country results. Through the CAS and cooperative arrangements with other donor agencies, the Bank must clearly link its support to expected country outcomes.
• Harmonize results reporting. The Bank needs to work with partners to reduce the burden of multiple, donor-driven reporting requirements by harmonizing approaches to managing for results.
• Improve statistical systems. Managing for results requires measuring progress—and thus requires timely and reliable statistics. Because many developing countries lack the ability to measure many key indicators, the global partnership needs to continue helping countries improve these systems.
• Assess development agency performance. The development agencies need to ensure clear definition of desired results and transparent assessment of progress.
• Disseminate good practice. Countries and agencies need to understand what managing for results is and why it is important to poverty reduction and economic growth. In the coming year the Bank will work with partners to produce a sourcebook on emerging good practice in managing for development results.

For more on the Marrakech Roundtable, go here.