Development Effectiveness Report 2023

CHAPTER 4

hospital complexes. Additionally, a project in Benin fostered the decentralization of laboratories as part of the emergency support to the health system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a road project in Uganda provided HIV test- ing to the population in the project areas. The effects from all these interventions are included in the 11.84 million people who benefited from the health sector projects as shown on page 53. Furthermore, the OPEC Fund provided financial resources for COVID-19 pandemic needs. One such COVID-19-related pro- ject helped Pakistan purchase urgently-needed medical, lab- oratory and testing supplies. This project, in addition to ben- efiting households through cash assistance as per the main results indicators shown previously, also provided economic stimulus measures for companies and industry (including tax breaks and subsidies for electricity). While many of the results — such as the increase in en ergy access and generation capacity, roads constructed/ refurbished or households supported with emergency assistance — reflect the significant contributions to devel- opment that OPEC Fund-supported projects have made, particular data on beneficiaries was not available for many projects. Similar to last year’s exercise, the completion re- ports generally cover outputs but not always outcomes such as information regarding beneficiaries. The listed number on beneficiaries can therefore be considered to significantly un- derestimate the size of the actually benefited populations. For instance, data on permanent jobs created was availa- ble for only two of the 23 projects analyzed – one energy project in Armenia (13 jobs) and one transport project in Madagascar (265 jobs). None of the four banking projects supporting MSMEs reported data on which of the MSMEs financed were women-owned. To convey a deeper understanding of the development effects of projects, the case studies presented on pages 56–60 de- scribe where some of these results come from and add con- text and illustration to the numbers presented in this chapter.