Country or Region: Latin America

Sector: Evaluation

Client: European Commission

Latin American countries have made significant steps towards achieving stable democracies, creating employment, and reducing poverty. Having acquired an upper middle-income status, many of the 18 countries that make up Latin America have transformed to become emerging donors.
Despite considerable improvements, the region faces challenges when it comes to balancing income distribution, reducing poverty, security, regular and organised crime, porous borders, economic growth, ensuring social inclusion, reducing socioeconomic disparities, mitigating the effects of climate change and recovering from natural disasters.

A key facet to the EU’s strategy in addressing these issues is the use of the Latin America Investment Facility (LAIF). The LAIF aims to mobilize funds using both EU grants and financial resources from European and regional facilities. The aim of the LAIF is to help Latin American countries finance projects in key areas that are essential for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, such as energy, environment, water, transport, social services, and support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The LAIF will be evaluated during this project. The mid term evaluation will be an overall independent assessment of the performance of the LAIF, paying particular attention to its different levels of results measured against its expected objectives; and the reasons underpinning such results. Recommendations will be given to improve current and future interventions.

 

The project will be assessed at the end according to various criteria, most importantly:

  • the impact (or lack of) on the quality of infrastructure which includes energy efficiency, renewable energy systems, sustainable transport and communication networks.
  • Its ability to increase environmental protection and support for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
  • How well it performs in improving social service infrastructure and support to SMEs