**PEN 1992 Sector Review**

**17**

knowledgeable and accommodating of the locations, problems, needs and perspectives of poor clients. According to Salmen, experience suggests that poverty reduction efforts would be more successful if they were energized more by _demand_ than supply.

- (c) _National capacily_ to carry out the four essential activities outlined above (i.e., information collection and analysis: policy analysis and formulation; planning, programming,budgetingandtargeting;and management, monitoring and evaluation of implementation), and to mobilize and coordinate the optimal contributions of partners in carrying out those four activities, including clients or target groups, NGOs, private sector, community groups, government (centralized and decentralized, across sectors).

sustainability of poverty interventions over the medium- to long-term. It should assist in developing and strengthening, where needed and appropriate, a country's commitment and capacity to address and resolve its own poverty-related issues and problems, with the full involvement of those who have much to gain from and contribute to the process: the poor.

# D. Evaluation **of FY92 Portfolio of PHN Projects: An Overview**

3.10 PHN projects approved during FY92 have been responsive to the Bank's poverty alleviation objective and have addressed both short- and medium-term issues. The following sections of this chapter will provide an overview of the poverty content of these projects and analyze special features of these interventions. For reference, the Credit and Project Summaries for each of the sixteen projects, as presented in the respective SARs, are reproduced in Annex 2.

# C. **The Bank's Role**

3.9 Invaryingdegreesandpatterns,thethree above-mentioned conditions for successful and sustainable poverty alleviation are not at present being effectively met in most of the Bank's client countries. These will take time to be fulfilled, and yet the needs of the poor and vulnerable are urgent in many of these countries and must be addressed immediately. Appropriate Bank intervention should ideally address both the short and medium-term issues. In order to prevent poor and vulnerable groups from slipping through the social safety net, particularly during periods of economic hardship and adjustment, the Bank should invest in activities to improve quickly and directly the food security and social welfare of the poorest and most vulnerable population groups. However, short-term,emergency-typeinvestments aimed at reducing poverty do not constitute by themselves a sufficient response to the Bank's poverty alleviation objective. The Bank needs also to focus on a crucial medium-term objective: that of stimulating and encouraging the three abovementioned conditions for success and 3.11 All sixteen PHN projects approved this year will, in various ways, benefit poor and vulnerable segments of national populations. This portfolio of projects can be subdivided into three categories in terms of how their design and objectives are geared towards poverty alleviation. The classification of the sixteen projects is presented in Table 6 and discussed below.

3.12 _Category I: MultisectoralInterventionsfor PovertyAlleviation (Poverty Projects)._ The primary objective of these projects is the provision of short-term emergency assistance to address the basic needs of groups most affected by a country's economic adjustment process, while also building national capacity to monitor and alleviate poverty in the medium- and long-term. Three of the sixteen PHN projects (or about 20 percent of the FY92 portfolio) fall into this category: Rwanda Food Security and Social Action, Guyana SIMAP/Health, Nutrition, Water and Sanitation, and Honduras Second Social Investment Fund. Short-term assistance provided through these projects is channeled to target groups in a