Evaluation

  • Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City.

    Viet Nam must escape low productivity, low value-add trap to industrialize

    By Hyun H. Son on Tuesday, 02 August 2016

    In its quest to become an industrialized nation, Viet Nam must redouble efforts to improve the skills of the labor force and cultivate high-technology, high value-add industries.

  • Wind farm in Turpan, PRC.

    5 ways interventions can support environmentally sustainable growth

    By Andrew Brubaker on Wednesday, 04 May 2016

    Recent evaluation shows these elements are crucial to supporting economic growth and eradicating poverty without further harming the environment.

  • Construction work on a bridge over the Mekong River in Viet Nam.

    Is infrastructure investment the answer to sluggish economic growth?

    By Vinod Thomas on Thursday, 21 April 2016

    Yes – but only if the focus is on quality and impact, and not on the quantity and volume of investment.

  • A child using a miniature racing canoe in the Marshall Islands.

    Making a bigger difference in the poorest and most vulnerable countries

    By Benjamin Graham on Wednesday, 20 January 2016

    ADB reforms and new resources provide an opportunity to make incremental progress on development work in Asia’s low-income countries.

  • Contractors build a cable tunnel for the new switchyard at the Nurek Hydroelectric Power Plant in Tajikistan.

    Top 5 surprising independent evaluation results

    By Vinod Thomas on Monday, 04 January 2016

    Although evaluation findings often confirm strongly held and highly intuitive views in areas like project design, sometimes there are unexpected results.

  • Workers on a railway construction project in Azerbaijan.

    Infrastructure and safeguards

    By Vinod Thomas on Tuesday, 06 October 2015

    As multilateral development banks gear up to fill serious gaps in infrastructure in Asia, attention also focuses on safeguards, which should be a top concern for established lenders such as the World Bank and ADB as well as new players like the AIIB.

  • Making private sector investments deliver development impacts

    By Vinod Thomas on Wednesday, 16 October 2013

    For development institutions, private sector investments offer plenty of potential for promoting inclusive and environmentally sustainable growth at a profit. But how successful are they in achieving actual development gains?

  • Success rates of ADB's completed projects supporting Millennium Development Goals, approved 2002-2010. View infographic in <a href="http://blogs.adb.org/sites/default/files/blog-mdg-full.jpg">full</a>.

    What comes after the MDGs?

    By Vinod Thomas on Monday, 27 May 2013

    A global debate on what comes after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015 is already in full swing. For Asia and the Pacific, a new development agenda will need to address those MDGs that made only slow progress or regressed and a number of emerging development issues gaining prominence.

  • How can evaluation promote better results?

    By Vinod Thomas on Thursday, 14 March 2013

    In development, as in matters of health, prevention is better than cure. Had policymakers acted boldly to avert well-recognized economic imbalances before 2008, the financial crisis may have been avoided.

  • Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) dropped 455mm of rain in Metro Manila in a span of 24 hours on 26 September 2009. A month’s worth of rainfall in a single day washed away homes and flooded large areas, killing hundreds and stranding thousands in the city and nearby provinces.

    Natural disasters and how much they affect the economy

    By Vinod Thomas on Thursday, 29 November 2012

    “We’ve never seen anything like this” is the refrain increasingly heard in every corner of the world in the wake of natural disasters. Indeed, intense natural disasters have increased nearly fourfold over the past four decades, with floods and storms representing 70% of the increase. Asia and the Pacific has been the worst hit region. Yet, the response to hazards of nature has been mostly to react when they strike. The upshot I see is this: unless prevention takes center stage, disasters will likely unravel progress.