Gambia - Fiscal Management Development Project

Overview & Synopsis

Ratings for the Fiscal Management Development Project for the Gambia were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the monitoring and evaluation quality was modest. Some lessons learned included: governance operations, which by nature contribute to multi-dimensional goals and can be difficult to frame and measure from an M&E perspective. While FMDP contributed towards increasing fiscal space and improving the effectiveness of public resources management, both outcomes are substantially broad, continuous, and slow maturing, and cannot be singularly influenced by discrete project activities. Fiscal space is also prone to exogenous factors. In these cases, Governance teams are advised to conduct robust results chain mapping that can help to pinpoint outcomes reflective of and attributable to project contribution. More broadly, there would be significant value for the Governance Global Practice to invest in more practitioner exchange and thought around M&E that balances between ambition and attribution. This is a recurring challenge for operations contributing to DRM, fiscal management (including fiscal sustainability of the SOE sector), expenditure efficiency, citizen engagement and other governance technical streams. The Gambia is highly dependent on external financing with grants equivalent to 8.1 percent of GDP, driven by budget and project support. A consequence of this is a proliferation of PIUs and other parallel project structures, diluting government coordination and accountability, and contributing to keeping core capacities out of reach of the core public sector. Encouraged by the investments made in country systems by FMDP and by the performance of its PIU, noted for its strong engagement and effective collaboration with IEs, the World Bank, and other donors, the MoFEA established a Central Project Coordination Unit (CPCU) from the FMDP PIU. The FMDP PIU was uniquely qualified to take on this role given its demonstrated track record of coordinating across the multiple implementing entities involved in FMDP. The CPCU, embedded within MoFEA, currently manages several donor operations. With further investment in its resources, the CPCU can take on more operations with the twin benefit of rationalizing parallel systems and embedding the management of donor operations within government structures and systems.