WB evaluation report "Improving Municipal Management for Cities to Succeed"
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTMMNGT/Resources/Municipal_eval.pdf
- all but one project failed to raise any private finance, and the one that did so doubled prices which hit the affordability for the poor: "Just seven projects addressed this, and only one obtained substantial efficacy in achieving greater private finance (table 4.1). This was under Colombia IV, which helped municipalities increase water, gas, and solid waste tariffs, thereby making some services profitable for private investors for the first time. At the same time it made some services less affordable to the poor because it did not provide a corresponding safety net for them. Average household expenditure on basic sanitation in Colombia rose by 204 percent between 1997 and 2003. Thus, an important factor in this positive result was the ability and willingness of municipalities to increase local tariffs, albeit with some loss of affordability."
- despite all the rhetoric about 'pro-poor' solutions, the projects did little for the poor and did not even aim to in many cases: "Only 27 percent of the 190 MDPs in the portfolio explicitly aimed to bring municipal services to the poor. Evidence of actual results achieved by the 114 completed MDPs is patchy, at best. There is some evidence that MDPs benefitted the poor, but it is thin, which is to be expected from an MDP portfolio so little focused on poverty."
- most projects ignored provision for operations and maintenance, so were as unsustainable as ever: "This study found only four MDPs that achieved substantial results in strengthening the municipal management of O&M. In the remainder
of the cases, O&M was either disregarded by MDPs that focused primarily on supporting the initial service investment, or it did not succeed for lack of funding (table 5.1)."
- positively, there was success in increasing tax revenues: "half the PPAR MDPs achieved substantial results in enhancing revenue mobilization. These successful MDPs updated tax records, expanded the coverage of cadastres or land registers, and
improved collections. Municipalities receiving such support in Brazil and Colombia saw their own revenues increase faster than fiscal transfers. Participating municipalities in Georgia saw significant growth of own revenues that had fallen for
nonparticipants over the 2002–05 period, and own revenues of participating municipalities in The Gambia grew 50 percent faster than expected."
- the survey indirectly shows how selective and marginal WB (and other) donor assistance is. It covered 190 projects completed over the 10 years 1998-2008, and these supported only 15% of the world's urban municipalities. I think this reinforces the need to re-focus on national policies and public spending as central to development.