Mid-term evaluation of programmes of budget support to public finances

The evaluation covers the Budget Support (BS) operations provided by the EU through three programmes, PARFIP (2013), PACE (2015) and PACE II (2017), between 2015 and 2018. This represents about 20% of the total amount (USD 295m) disbursed by the main Technical and Financial Partners (TFPs) which are the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (DPO) and France.
The evaluation focuses more precisely on the analysis of achievements, attainment and quality of results, as well as on the analysis of actions, in the context of a constantly evolving cooperation policy. Increasing emphasis will be placed on results-oriented approaches and on the contribution to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDOs). The results in terms of impact for the beneficiaries have been further developed in two areas:
– governance, which is essential for catalytic investments;
– other vectors of change.
Global budget support brings together a specialisation and complementarity of roles and instruments addressing the country's fragility: the IMF supervises the macroeconomic balances with its Extended Credit Facility, the World Bank uses DPOs for the vectors of change within its remit and the European Union deploys its State Building and Resilience Support Contract. In addition to remittances, the EU's BS is the main source of funding for all accompanying measures. Finally, the EU's BS is an important grant with no impact on the debt profile. The EU’s Budget Support should be followed by joint performance assessment and public policy monitoring frameworks, which are essential to feed into the specific high-level dialogue on BS.