Different development donors have different manners of releasing information on their early-stage projects. While many offer interactive visualizations and machine-readable databases of current and past operations, interventions, and financed projects, few create the same tools for their pipeline of projects under consideration. But many do release pipeline data containing valuable information — some in more useful formats, some in less.
At the more transparent end of the spectrum, the United States Agency for International Development has its Business Forecast, which is highly accessible as a real-time spreadsheet and searchable web portal. Others, such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank, have a searchable database with regularly released PDF documents summarizing their pipelines. Others offer no formalized early-stage project information — newly approved projects may be announced ad hoc in press releases, or through board meeting notes, or not at all.
Devex has previously analyzed the project pipelines of the World Bank and USAID. Now, we want to extend that analysis to another donor that makes a strong effort to be transparent about upcoming projects: the Inter-American Development Bank.