PHN 1992 Sector Review 16 3.5 The _translation of policy into practice_ is a third essential ingredient for successful and sustainable poverty reduction. It involves the planning and programming of resources and design of activities for the optimal benefit of the poor. Particularly challenging in this regard (both technically and politically) are: (1) the review and reallocation of public investment and recurrent budgets for PHN away from the development of more sophisticated services and the support of an excessively curative orientation, characteristic of many current allocative patterns, towards more basic curat-ve, preventive and promotional activities; and (2) the targeting of groups most in need, both to ensure the availability of basic services and to ensure their affordability. Finally, _implementation_ of poverty alleviation activities requires good organization and sound management of human, financial and physical resources, a reliable monitoring and evaluation system for early detection of implementation issues, and the flexibility to fine-tune design and objectives to overcome these issues rapidly. In addition to tracking the implementation process, monitoring and evaluation should assess the impact on the poor of program or project interventions, and should inform policy analysis and formulation.

# _2. Wo._

3.6 Both L. _Salmen'sInstitutional Dimensions of Poverty Reduction_ (WPS No. 411) and the FY91 Annual PHN Sector Review (WPS No. 890) stress the importance of using optimally the numerous and various potential actors and institutions in the sector -- both public and private -- according to their comparative advantages. Salmen argues that the understanding, development and use of local and informal institutions in the design, promotion and delivery of basic services for the poor is likely to result in an intervention which is highly cognizant of and responsive to demand and, therefore, more likely to result in the success and sustainability of such interventions. The FY91 ASR, which addressed "Institutional Development in Support of a Poverty Focus for the PHN Sectors', argues that significant gains in quality and efficiency could be realized if the private commercial sector, NGOs, community organizations, universities, national and regional institutions specializing in training, consulting and research and other groups outside the public sector, were encouraged to work in partnership with government -- both centralized and decentralized -- to address and resolve sector issues.

# 3. _How._

3.7 How best to address the poverty problem is a question which has not been fully answered. This is due in part to the need to tailor interventions to a particular country context, thus indicating an "it depends" answer. It is also due in part to the fact that lessons from experience have not been sufficiently analyzed, exploited or widely disseminated and that much more pilot testing, operational research, and monitoring, and evaluation of poverty initiatives need to be carried out in order to fine-tune efforts to alleviate poverty and provide basic social services to the poor.

3.8 There does exist, however, some guidance in this regard. The operational guidelines emanating from the 1990 WDR, the FY91 PHN ASR and L. Salmen's _Institutional Dimensions of Poverty Reduction_ all stress the importance of the following three conditions for successful and sustainable poverty alleviation interventions:

- (a) A full _understanding_ of the extent of the poverty issue at all levels of government (particularly the highest), which would provide the basis for a firm _commitment_ to address the issue and more _transparency_ in policy formulation.

- (b) The reorientation of poverty interventions (including basic social services) to be more