Since 2015, SEGURA has completed more than 35 multi-month economic and financial analyses for the World Bank. These include ex-ante evaluations used to inform the World Bank’s project appraisal process, and ex-post evaluations comparing a project’s expected impacts with its actual results. In terms of regional coverage, SEGURA has supported the World Bank in a dozen countries in South and Central America, as well as Africa (Tanzania, Mozambique, Uganda), Asia (Timor-Leste), and Eastern Europe (Albania). As part of its services to the World bank, SEGURA has conducted four or more evaluations each in Brazil, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, and Tanzania. For all evaluations, data collection and analysis took place in collaboration with relevant World Bank project teams and stakeholders, and more than half involved trips to the field.
A sample selection of assignments by sector includes:
Water and Sanitation
Water Access in Uganda: In 2018, the World Bank was appraising a possible activity to construct water infrastructure and strengthen water management in Ugandan towns and municipalities. SEGURA was asked to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the project’s economic and financial impacts. The evaluation quantified the main economic benefits of the project for Ugandan households, namely savings in travel time and water pricing. It also demonstrated the financial benefits service providers would gain from the use of tariffs and increased water billings. The evaluation additionally analyzed the service operators’ financial capacity to maintain and operate the envisioned water works.
Utility Efficiency in Mexico: The Water Utilities Efficiency Improvement Project (PROME) provided training and financing to improve commercial, physical, and energy efficiency across 91 Mexican water utilities from 2011 to 2016. SEGURA completed an ex-post evaluation of the project to assess its impacts on the utilities and on society more broadly. The evaluation measured financial benefits to the utilities as savings of operating financial costs and increases in revenues. Benefits to society were measured as the savings of operating economic costs when physical losses were reduced or energy usage improved.
Urban Development
Urban Infrastructure in Tanzania: In 2017, the World Bank sought to justify the provision of additional credit for the Tanzania Strategic Cities Project. SEGURA performed an economic evaluation to measure anticipated cost-benefit flows for consumers and local authorities. For road interventions, benefits were measured as reduction of travel time and savings in vehicle operating costs. For solid waste management and landfill interventions, benefits were measured using the minimum tipping fee required to make the operation viable, in addition to GHG emissions reductions. Financial predictions were based on expected cost and revenue increases.
Municipal Governance in Mozambique: From 2011 to 2017, the Maputo Municipal Development Program II worked to increase the capacity of the City Council of Maputo, Mozambique, to finance, manage, and maintain urban services and infrastructure. SEGURA conducted an ex-post evaluation of select project interventions. The economic benefits of road interventions and neighborhood improvements were proxied by travel time savings and property appreciation, respectively. The financial benefits of increased property taxes and improvements in municipal financial management were captured through revenue increases.
Resistance to External Shocks
Disaster Risk Mitigation in Brazil: In 2019, the Banco Regional de Desenvolvimento do Extremo Sul requested a World Bank loan to deepen its financing and technical support for disaster risk mitigation in Brazil’s Southern region. SEGURA was contracted to conduct an economic evaluation for a sample of representative project interventions. The evaluation applied an averted cost approach to predict project benefits in terms of expected damages and losses to be averted from the interventions. SEGURA also examined the ability of municipalities to comply with loan requirements concerning indebtedness, capacity to pay interest, and amortization.
Flood Management in Guyana: In 2020, SEGURA was contracted to help assess the economic impacts of additional World Bank funding to Guyana for reconstruction of dams and drainage interventions as part of its Flood Risk Management Project. In particular, the assessment focused on two principal drainage areas, one each in a predominantly urban (Lillendaal) and agricultural/rural (Ogle) area. SEGURA helped assess whether proposed activities were economically viable via cost-benefit analysis, including evaluating expected benefits from planned interventions in terms of both residential and commercial losses to be averted from reduction of flooding risks.
Client:
World Bank
Years:
2015-Present
Location:
Albania, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Suriname, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Uganda, Uruguay
Technical Areas:
Infrastructure & Environment;
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning