Zambia country assistance review : turning an economy around

Abstract

World Bank assistance to Zambia during the 1980s and 1990s has been characterized by the predominance of adjustment lending. Despite this assistance, Zambia has become an IDA-only borrower. This operation evaluation generally concludes that given the nature of Zambia'a problems and the government's wavering commitment to reform in the 1980s, there was too much emphasis on policy-based operations and too much emphasis within policy-based operations on stabilization rather than on long-term structural adjustment. A more balanced approach, with a higher share (of a smaller total) of funds going to physical and social infrastructure, would have been desirable. Despite the election of a new government and improving economic policies in the 1990s, Zambia's economic performance remains poor. The prolonged suspension of lending between 1987 and 1991, required by Zambia'a arrears to the Bank impacted negatively on many ongoing projects, and considerably reduced a rich program of economic and sector work (ESW), adversely affecting the ESW basis of Bank operations after the suspension was lifted. The conclusion drawn from this episode is that some of the negative consequences from prolonged suspensions can be avoided with appropriate actions taken during the suspension; this can increase the efficacy of the Bank's assistance.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.