Do we know if the Bank's pro-poor projects benefit the poor?

Date
Sep 2010
The Inter-American Development Bank has been committed to reducing poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Bank's Institutional Strategy spells out its commitment to "contribute to the struggle against poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, making it a first priority to its lending, technical assistance and research activities". Yet, OVE evaluations have shown that the degree of empirical documentation of the results and performance of the Bank's projects is limited. This evaluation focuses on a specific subset of the Bank's projects: those that are explicitly aiming to reach the poor, which will be referred to as "pro-poor projects". The evaluation examines the degree to which these projects document their targeting (getting the services to the poor) and their ability to produced results in the lives of the intended beneficiaries.