Synthesis of Budget Support Evaluations : Analysis of the Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations of seven Country Evaluations of Budget Support

1. This Report has been prepared by Fiscus, UK for the Evaluation Unit of Europe Aid. It presents a synthesis of the seven evaluations of General and Sector Budget Support, undertaken in Tunisia, Mali, Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique and Morocco over 2010 -2014. These represent the full set of evaluations completed to date, following the revised methodological approach for evaluation of budget support, adopted by the OECD-DAC Network on development evaluation in 2012. The study builds on preliminary findings reported in 2011 in OECD-DAC’s Evaluation Insights, based on the Tunisia, Mali and Zambia cases. 2.The principal goal has been to draw up a summary of the lessons from recent experience with budget support and to develop a corresponding set of recommendations. A central question addressed is how far Budget Support has contributed towards the achievement of targeted development results and how far it has had positive or negative unintended effects. General and Sectoral Budget Support operations have been compared and an analysis has been made of the relative contributions and roles of the different components of Budget Support. 3. An additional objective has been to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the “3 step approach” to the evaluation of Budget Support, which has been adopted by the OECD-DAC Network on Development Evaluation and applied in each ofthese cases. The specific tools and evaluation techniques used by each evaluation team have been compared and assessed so as to develop recommendations on possible improvements to evaluation practice. The results of this assessment are presented in a separate volume. (Volume II.)