Project

Review of Swiss contributions to the AquaFund of the IDB

How well does the partnership with the Aquafund of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) work? Commissioned by SDC and SECO, EBP assessed the relevance and effectiveness of SDC’s and SECO’s contributions to this fund, and, together with the partners, came up with recommendations, whilst at the same time improving their level of cooperation.

In 2011, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) contributed around nine million US dollars to the Aquafund of the IDB, the largest multilateral development bank in the region. The Aquafund is a fund for financing technical cooperation projects in the water and sanitation sector in Latin America and the Caribbean region. These projects include technical and conceptual expertise and/or studies for loan project preparation, knowledge transfer, national and regional water partnerships, institutional strengthening and pilot investment grants.

In order to provide a sound basis for decision-making with regard to future collaboration mechanisms, SDC and SECO mandated EBP to analyze the outputs and outcomes achieved by the AquaFund as a whole, and, specifically, by the Swiss contribution. The review focused on the relevance and effectiveness of the national and regional projects financed through Aquafund, as well as on the collaboration between IDB, SECO and SDC between 2011 and 2013.

EBP conducted the review using a combination of several carefully selected methods: desk review, written inputs from a wide range of surveyed parties, personal interviews and a field mission. The field mission included a visit to IDB’s headquarters in Washington D.C. and meetings with representatives of SDC and SECO in Nicaragua and Peru.

The review involved working closely with local consultants and an advisory group consisting of nine representatives from the national offices and headquarters of SDC, SECO and IDB, thus ensuring that the recommendations and top priority measures were developed in a collaborative way. This process also served to further strengthen the level of cooperation between the partners.

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