World Bank Group Engagement in Upper-Middle-Income Countries : Evidence from IEG Evaluations
Middle-income countries (MICs)—the largest group of World Bank Group clients—are critical drivers of the world economy, but they remain vulnerable to global shocks. Addressing the development challenges facing MICs can generate positive externaliti...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/185461503496811121/World-Bank-Group-engagement-in-upper-middle-income-countries-evidence-from-IEG-evaluations http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28294 |
| Summary: | Middle-income countries (MICs)—the
largest group of World Bank Group clients—are critical
drivers of the world economy, but they remain vulnerable to
global shocks. Addressing the development challenges facing
MICs can generate positive externalities and transferable
knowledge to lower income countries. According to the 2017
World Bank Group document, “Forward Look: A Vision for the
World Bank Group in 2030—Progress and Challenges,” to meet
its twin goals of eradicating extreme poverty and ensuring
shared prosperity in a sustainable manner, the World Bank
Group must sustain and evolve its engagement with MICs. This
synthesis review focuses on the World Bank Group’s
engagement with upper-middle-income countries (UMICs) and
concludes that the Bank Group’s support to them remains
highly relevant from two perspectives: helping these
countries address their specific developmental challenges,
and potentially having a valuable demonstration effect for
other lower-income groups of World Bank Group clients. The
more successful programs the World Bank Group supported were
generally long duration and went well beyond the scope of a
single investment loan or development policy loan. The World
Bank Group’s willingness to sustain its engagement and build
close relationships at the technical level contributed to
successful outcomes. Despite this high relevance, important
challenges remain in fully addressing some of the structural
issues that underlie UMIC’s vulnerability to various shocks
and in making progress that is more significant and
sustained in several important development areas. The
general perception is that World Bank Group financing is
diminishing in UMICs, but the World Bank continues its
important dialogue and engagement with UMICs despite this
perception, covering a wide range of issues from fostering
countercyclical policies, to building resilience, to
financing large infrastructure projects, to catalyzing
private sector participation. IEG evaluations consistently
emphasized the high relevance of the World Bank’s analytic
work in supporting reforms in UMICs and the high value that
country stakeholders in UMICs assigned to its analytical
work and technical assistance. Going forward, there is scope
for further work on analyzing World Bank Group performance
across various groups and subgroups of clients, including
within narrower technical areas. |
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