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