IFC’s Development Results

Positive development outcomes are the principal measure of IFC’s success. IFC’s strategy, activities, investments, and incentives all emphasize development results.

We assess our development effectiveness principally through:

1. Standard indicators, which capture the investment’s development reach to affected stakeholders and track our achievement against expected development objectives defined at the beginning of the project
2. An overall development outcome assessment, which captures economic, environmental and social, and financial performance of the project along with broader private sector development impacts.

More about how we measure results.


Impacts on Stakeholders – Standard Indicators
To assess how our investments touch the lives of stakeholders, we collect data across standard development reach indicators. In 2009, for example, our clients treated 7.6 million hospital patients and provided electricity to 29.4 million customers. Different projects impact stakeholders differently, and our analysis shows how these impacts differ by industry given the nature of their operations. When we can, we quantify these benefits and costs to society overall by calculating the project’s Economic Rate of Return but not all benefits can be monetized easily.

Development Reach of IFC-supported Client Companies, 2009 – Some examples

Beneficiaries	Results in 2009*
MSMEs (Micro, small, and medium enterprises)	US$112 billion loans to 10 million MSMEs
Patients**	7.6 million patients reached
Gas distribution	15.7 million customers served
Governments	Received $20 billion in payments
Local suppliers	Sold $38 billion worth of their goods and services to our client companies

(*)Reach data for select industries; reporting periods vary somewhat across select industries
(**) Includes just over one million patients in a hospital chain in India, in which IFC has a 1.3% equity stake.

IFC’s Overall Development Results
The overall development outcome rating is an important measure of IFC’s institutional effectiveness. It is based on ratings for four underlying performance areas – financial, economic, and environmental and social performance, along with an assessment of broader impact on private sector development. IFC rates all portfolio companies to know how we are doing and to answer questions, for example, what proportion of our projects earns high ratings in terms of development outcome, and which regions or sectors perform better and why.


Development Outcome of IFC’s Investment Operations


In fiscal year 2010, 71 percent of IFC’s investment operations were rated high in terms of overall development outcome. Among the four performance components that inform the overall development outcome, high financial performance was hardest to achieve: 57 percent of our projects met our benchmark, a financial return that exceeds the company’s cost of capital. Private Sector Development Impact was strongest overall: 78 percent of IFC projects were rated high.

More about IFC's results and their measurement.
More about our analysis and findings.
More about Results in IFC in Context.