When it comes to improving portfolio performance, the Maghreb Country Management Unit (CMU) has found a solution that worked well: Partnering with the Government counterparts to form a strong Implementation Support Team (IST).
In early March 2019, the World Bank hosted eight Government representatives from various ministries and institutions (including the Central Bank) from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. These representatives form what the Maghreb CMU has called "the ISTs". They had a busy week of training on World Bank operations from Strategy to results on the ground and the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluations. They even participated in the Quarterly MNA-Global Practices portfolio review to see first-hand how the region and the Global Practices partner together for better portfolio performance and were determined to replicate the approach with their sector ministries. These ISTs played a major role in improving the Maghreb portfolio performance and boosting its disbursement ratios and therefore are playing a major role in expediting results on the ground to the beneficiaries.
