Extended Country Program Evaluation: Barbados 2015-2023

The Extended Country Program Evaluation of Barbados covers the last two Country strategies (CSs) of the Inter-American Development Bank Group between 2015 and 2023. This evaluation assesses the relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability of the IDB Group strategies and programs in Barbados to provide input for preparing the new IDB Group strategy with Barbados for 2024-2027. The Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE) found that both CSs were overall relevant and consistent with the government's priorities and the country's challenges. However, the relevance was affected by issues of limited strategic selectivity, weak vertical logic, and evaluability shortcomings. In terms of effectiveness, the evaluation found that the IDB had high or medium contributions to 6 of the 13 SOs in both CSs. Higher contributions were made in areas that benefited from the IDBs long-term support, where there was a program commensurate with the SO's scope and sustained government prioritization. These were the cases of the SOs in energy, fiscal, social, and access to finance. However, implementation issues, a program in its early stages, and evaluability issues hindered the program's contribution to objectives. The sustainability of results depends on both the Government's commitment to sustainability and the IDBs complementary support in institutional capacity. Based on the findings, OVE recommends to (1) continue supporting key areas that address long-term development challenges and in which the IDB Group has proven to be a key partner; (2) continue working with the Government of Barbados to improve project execution of IDB Group financed operations; and (3) strengthen coordination between the IDB and IDB Invest to better address constraints to private sector investments.