ABSTRACT
The World Bank’s lending policy bears out the fact that, in multilateral development financing, domestic political aspects prevail over purely economic criteria in project decision making and throughout the project cycle. The Bank’s overall macroeconomic analysis of a borrowing country is often a very meritorious economist’s effort, and it normally provides the basic economic criteria on which the Bank evaluates its lending policy for the potential borrower. However, the time needed for a project to be worked out and for multilateral development lending to become really effective means there might be a real problem in project implementation at a later stage as it might take place in a changed environment. The Bank makes a great effort to improve the statistics of developing countries and their comparability, yet the data inputs still remain a major problem in all project appraisal. As the time lag between appraisal and actual implementation becomes greater, these problems become more acute.
