Planning of National Transport Infrastructure
In the Islamic Countries
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65% went to roads, 27% to railways, 6% to air transport and 2% to ports. The distribution
between countries reflected their size, population and economic importance, with most funding
going to the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. The work was carried out in two phases:
1. A desk review of 25 completed transport projects in the four transport sub-sectors:
roads, railways, air transport and maritime transport, in 10 Central and Eastern
European (CEE) countries. This was based on available internal documentation and
interviews with members of operational staff;
2. A subsequent in-depth analysis phase, including field investigations, of 10 of the
original 25 projects.
The main evaluation criteria and their definitions were in line with the standards of the Bank,
the European Commission and other IFIs. The main evaluation criteria used are Relevance,
Effectiveness (Efficacy), Efficiency, Sustainability, Institutional Development Impact, and the
EIB’s Performance. Individual projects were rated in four categories: “Good”, “Satisfactory”,
“Unsatisfactory”, and “Poor”, in accordance with the Bank’s evaluation procedures.
While most of the projects were successful, there were a number of measures which were
recommended to increase the Bank's added value, improve project efficiency and sustainability,
and maximize the contribution of projects to EU and national policy objectives.
The ADB also puts a lot of emphasis on ex-ante and ex-post evaluations based on relevance,
effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. The ADB also uses the international criteria of
Relevance, which refers to the adequacy of the design and the consistency of the project’s impact
and outcome with the government’s and donor’s development strategies at the time of approval.
Effectiveness, which refers to the extent towhich the project outcome as designed and approved,
has been achieved. Efficiency which refers to how economically resources have been converted
to results, typically expressed as the economic internal rate of return or cost-effectiveness
indicators and sustainability that ADB states as referring to the likelihood that human,
institutional, financial, and other resources are sufficient to maintain the project outcome over
its economic life.
The ADB also applies impact evaluation which involves systematic identification of a given
development activity’s effects—positive or negative, intended or not—on individual
households, institutions, and the environment. It helps to better understand the extent to which
activities reach the poor and the magnitude of their effects on people’s welfare. Tools for impact
evaluations can be large-scale sample surveys in which project populations and control groups
are compared before and after the intervention and possibly at several points during it.
Evaluations can also be done through small-scale rapid assessment and participatory appraisals
where estimates of impact are obtained from combining group interviews, key informants, case
studies, and available secondary data. There are two basic approaches to impact evaluation:
non-experimental and random experimental. The non-experimental approach uses statistical
techniques to construct the counterfactual outcome. These techniques, though frequently used,
are often subject to biased results that may lead to incorrect development impacts. Random
experimental methods are common in the pharmaceutical and other industries but are new to
the economic development field. In the medical field, random assignment to treatment and
control groups (also called a “randomized control trial”) is implemented depending on the