Regional Program Evaluation of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States
The six independent members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)— Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—face major development challenges and vulnerabilities. Th...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/321361475064538830/Regional-program-evaluation-of-the-organisation-of-Eastern-Caribbean-States-Antigua-and-Barbuda-Dominica-Grenada-St-Kitts-and-Nevis-St-Lucia-and-St-Vincent-and-the-Grenadines-Cluster-country-program-evaluation-on-small-states http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33199 |
| Summary: | The six independent members of the
Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)— Antigua and
Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia,
and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—face major development
challenges and vulnerabilities. Their small size entails
diseconomies of small scale in infrastructure, institutions,
and markets. They are highly vulnerable to natural
disasters, especially hurricanes, and to climate change.
Their open but undiversified economies expose them to
shocks. Tourism, now the dominant activity, faces eroding
competitiveness and a loss of market share. A vicious circle
has prevailed of low growth, high debt levels from weak
public finances, and frequent shocks. During the FY06–14
evaluation period, the World Bank Group engaged with the
OECS on two pillars of development: strengthening resilience
and improving competitiveness. Program design was relevant
and had laudable attributes, such as a good instrument mix
in several cases, support for regional solutions with a
strong economic rationale, flexibility to address risk,
effective use of partnerships, and provision to confront
capacity constraints. Bank Group program objectives however,
were broad-ranging, involving many sectors and numerous
activities. Greater selectivity would have allowed greater
consistency and continuity of Bank support in priority
areas, likely bringing better results. This evaluation rates
the program’s progress toward achieving its objectives
during FY06–14 as moderately satisfactory. Bank Group
support helped strengthen areas such as fiscal and debt
management, disaster risk management, social resilience, and
the financial sector in the wake of the 2008–09 global
crisis. A particularly important contribution drew on the
Bank’s comparative advantage to help overcome a market
failure through the establishment of a self-supporting,
sustainable insurance mechanism against disaster events, the
Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility. Looking
ahead, it will be necessary to ensure selectivity and
specificity in the objectives of new Bank lending, and
simplicity and flexibility in its design, with appropriate
provision for the institutional capacity that it requires.
The Bank Group should also continue supporting OECS-wide
development solutions, but only where the economic rationale
and support among country stakeholders are strong. It should
also continue consolidating its portfolio of activities,
ensuring complementarity within clusters of lending and
nonlending products, and seek to strengthen and showcase
collaboration by the World Bank and the International
Finance Corporation. |
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