Evaluation of the Shareholder Special Fund (2016-20)

Background

The EBRD Shareholder Special Fund (SSF) was established in 2008 so the Bank could respond more effectively to the remaining transition challenges in its region of operations by providing essential grant resources – technical cooperation and co-investment grants – to support the Bank’s operations and policy dialogue. Since its inception, more than €1.1 billion of the Bank’s net income allocation has been channelled through the SSF, supporting upwards of 2,200 TC and co-investment grant projects throughout the EBRD regions. In parallel to backing the Bank’s transition agenda, the SSF has also become an integral part of its crisis response toolbox. The last full evaluation of the SSF took place in 2014. This latest evaluation offers an independent, comprehensive up-to-date assessment of the Fund. It looked principally at the period January 2016 to December 2020, though it also considered changes in and performance of the SSF since, where relevant.

Main findings

EvD’s evaluation identified the following set of insights:

The portfolio analysis confirms that the SSF remains an important and sometimes crucial source of funding for banking and non-banking teams.

The speed at which SSF funding is made available has far-reaching implications that go beyond a simple notion of time and convenience.

In times of crisis, the SSF offers an opportunity to respond quickly to priority areas.

The SSF allocation system is efficient and its regular review is a good practice.❙ Sufficient monitoring and reporting on SSF control mechanisms are not available.

There is demand for enhanced SSF knowledge management and sharing that would improve SSF performance.