Focused Assessment of the International Development Association’s Private Sector Window

Attracting private capital and developing the private sector in low-income countries are challenging. The challenges involved in mobilizing private capital and developing the private sector in many IDA countries, especially those that are fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), are substantial (World Bank 2016). In many of these countries, the domestic private sector is small, informal, and constrained by a weak macroeconomic and regulatory environment, infrastructure bottlenecks, and a limited skilled labor force. High country risks and capital flight concerns make domestic and international investors reluctant to engage, particularly in FCS, which also experience security risks. As a result, IDA countries’ ability to attract private investment and grow the local private sector remains limited. The assessment will update a previous IEG evaluation of the Private Sector Window (PSW) and complement a concurrent paper by the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). This focused assessment (the PSW evaluation update) responds to a request by the Committee on Development Effectiveness and World Bank Group management for IEG to prepare an update to The World Bank Group’s Experience with the IDA Private Sector Window: An Early-Stage Assessment (World Bank 2021), which was completed by IEG in July 2021 and covered the PSW implementation experience under the 18th Replenishment of IDA (IDA18) for fiscal years 2018–20. The PSW evaluation update will add IDA19 and early IDA20 PSW projects. Concurrently, IDA, IFC, and MIGA are jointly preparing a paper on the PSW as an input to the IDA20 Mid-Term Review, focused on implementation progress and early results of the PSW (the IDA PSW paper). The IEG and IDA-IFC-MIGA teams working on the two assessments have agreed to conduct complementary analyses to inform the Mid-Term Review.