Country Policy and Institutional Assessment

The World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment is done annually for all its borrowing countries. It has evolved into a set of criteria, which are grouped in four clusters: (a) economic management; (b) structural policies; (c) policies for social inclusion and equity; and (d) public sector management and institutions. The number of criteria, currently sixteen, reflect a balance between ensuring that all key factors that foster pro-poor growth and poverty alleviation are captured, without overly burdening the evaluation process. Ratings for each of the criteria reflect a variety of indicators, observations, and judgments. They focus on the quality of each country's current policies and institutions - which are the main determinant of present aid effectiveness prospects. To fully underscore the importance of the CPIA in the IDA Performance Based Allocations, the overall country score is referred to as the IDA Resource Allocation Index (IRAI).