Interactive: What does the World Bank's latest pipeline data tell us?

It has been approximately a year since the Devex team began extracting, cleaning, and uploading pipeline data from the World Bank’s Monthly Operational Summaries, or MOS, to our funding database. Analyzing the latest data 12 months on, what have we learned? And what insights can the data give us into the priorities discussed at last month’s World Bank Spring Meetings? As of the release of the March MOS, the World Bank pipeline contained 1,073 projects — loans, credits, and grants currently being prepared or considered by the bank and its beneficiary governments. The projects’ forecast budgets totaled $125 billion, of which $102 billion are to be contributed by the International Development Association, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. The remainder is to be contributed by third parties, mostly other donor institutions or beneficiary governments. This time last year, those figures were slightly lower: 998 projects worth $106 billion, $87 billion of which was to be contributed by the bank. The top recipient countries of World Bank funding have not changed in the last year. The top 10 remain the same, though some have switched positions. South Asian countries are currently allocated much of the pipeline funding: Projects in India are budgeted $10.5 billion, $6.95 billion in Bangladesh, and $6.2 billion in Pakistan. Several African economies also figure in the top 10 most-funded countries, including Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya. There was also little variance in the sectoral prioritization of the bank over the last year, although thanks to the general increase in the size of the pipeline, nearly every sector has a larger budgeted amount now than it did in March of 2017. The one notable change in the rankings is that the pipeline budget for education projects leapt from 60 projects worth $5.3 billion in March last year to 90 projects worth $10.9 billion currently, with over $2 billion allocated to Bangladesh alone. New projects in the pipeline Projects generally remain in the bank’s pipeline for about 13 months until they have been approved by the board of directors, as well as the relevant government agency in the beneficiary country. In theory, projects entering the MOS now should begin generating opportunities for World Bank implementers and consultants in about one year’s time — though some projects stall for longer in the pipeline, and some fly through in a single month. Since the beginning of 2018, $12.2 billion worth of new projects have been added to the pipeline across all regions of the bank’s operations. Egypt, Nigeria, and Uganda in particular have seen large increases of $1 billion, $950 million, and $700 million respectively. Two projects, each budgeted $500 million, have entered Egypt’s pipeline in the last three months: A rural sanitation project co-financed by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the Beheira, Dakahliya, and Sharkiya governorates; and a health care project aimed at social insurance reform and the elimination of viral hepatitis C in the country. Nigeria and Uganda both had large energy related projects added to their pipelines — a distribution development project in Nigeria worth $500 million, and an electricity market development program in Uganda worth $275 million. Similar energy projects also entered the pipeline for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic ($460 million), Angola ($400 million), Kenya ($370 million), and Malawi ($262 million). These large additions to the pipeline partially explain the increase in energy sector financing over the past year. The bank doesn’t appear to be pushing through projects before the end of 2019 however, when its announcement that it will no longer finance upstream oil and gas projects will take effect. Rather, the project descriptions indicate that most of them relate to sustainable energy — hydro and solar especially — or improvements to existing grid and transmission infrastructure, rather than to new oil and gas related projects. Projects entering implementation When a project is removed from the MOS, it indicates one of two things: Either it was cancelled, or it was approved and is moving into the implementation stage. Projects in the latter group will begin generating funding opportunities for partners and contractors of the bank. In the first three months of 2018, 68 projects worth $8.5 billion were removed from the World Bank pipeline. These include $3.8 billion worth of projects in Asia and the Pacific, $2.4 billion budgeted for new projects in sub-Saharan Africa, $1.3 billion for Latin America, and $700 million for North Africa and the Middle East. Looking at sectors, agriculture and water have had the most funding moving toward implementation since the start of the year. Among the largest of these were a basic services improvement project in Ethiopia for nearly $1 billion; three rural development and irrigation projects in India and Pakistan, all between $300 million and $450 million; a flood management program for Manila in the Philippines worth $415 million; and two Kenyan energy grid projects worth a total of $450 million. Nine water sector projects worth $1.2 billion also exited the pipeline to move toward implementation in Argentina, Vietnam, and Mali. The approved funding included a number of high-value projects in Pakistan in addition to the irrigation project, including projects in the Punjab province for rural development ($300 million) and public revenue mobilization ($200 million). Insights from the Spring Meetings The World Bank’s pipeline data can bring perspective to some of the priorities and topics discussed at the bank’s Spring Meetings last month. It offers an idea of how the bank will operationalize those priorities in future operations, and how they will translate into funding opportunities for development implementers. We’ll look at three key areas of focus from the meetings: The bank’s pivot toward fragile and conflict-affected states; addressing the global “learning crisis;” and Africa’s digital economy. 1. Fragile and Conflict-Affected States The 18th replenishment of IDA’s funding more than doubled the amount it could allocate to operations in fragile and conflict-affected states. The bank’s pipeline data seems to confirm the increased focus on these states: Since March 2017, the amount of funding budgeted for projects in fragile states has increased by 49 percent, compared to a 13 percent increase for other states. For reference, these figures are aggregated at a country level, based on which states appear in the bank’s harmonized list of fragile situations. The fragile countries allocated the most funding in the current pipeline include Afghanistan ($2.6 billion), DRC ($2.2 billion), Mozambique, and Iraq (both $1.9 billion). There is proportionally more funding for health and energy, and less for transport and water, in fragile states compared to non-fragile states — but these differences are small. 2. Education Over the past year, the pipeline for education-related projects has increased by over $5 billion, amid what the bank has described as a global “learning crisis,” with many poor and vulnerable children excluded from school, and others leaving school with low levels of literacy and numeracy. The increase comes at an interesting time for education funding. Although innovative development financing structures, such as results-based financing and other means of “crowding in” private capital, are increasingly regarded as desirable or necessary to fund the future of development, some stakeholders remain unconvinced about the value of private sector funding for education — concerns that were voiced during the bank’s Spring Meetings. Of the education projects currently being developed in the pipeline, none are co-funded or managed by private sector entities. But in the early stages of project preparation, it is difficult to draw conclusions about future private sector participation. There are some potentially meaningful statistics we can extract. For example, 49 of the 90 education projects, worth $6.4 billion, do not have an identified executing agency, such as a local ministry of education. This includes 12 projects that have already been approved by the bank’s board. Since these projects lack the participation of an education-focused public entity, they may be managed by private sector entities. However, many of these projects are focused on skills development and employability rather than public education, including pipeline projects in Moldova, Nigeria, China, DRC, and Congo-Brazzaville. 3. Digital Economies in Africa Finally, one of the meetings’ flagship events focused on creating digital economies in Africa through a combination of infrastructure-focused IFC investment and policy and capacity development on the part of the World Bank. The bank’s pipeline already reveals a number of projects under preparation to promote “digital economies.” Some focus on public policy as it pertains to the ICT sector or service delivery, including a digital identifications project in Nigeria, two projects in Tanzania, and two in Burundi. Others focus on skills development and human capital as it relates to digital technology, including large projects in Nigeria, Chad, Ghana, and Benin. Devex estimates that approximately $2 billion worth of projects currently in the pipeline fall into the category of digital economy in Africa. Those projects can be found in our list from the World Bank MOS reports, although there is no specific category for “digital economy” projects. You can visit our interactive visualization of World Bank pipeline data to analyze the data yourself. The visualization and lists of projects will be updated every month after the release of the latest MOS. Be sure to check back to monitor projects relevant to your organization as they progress through the bank’s project preparation process.