Approach Paper: Extended Country Program Evaluation: Costa Rica 2015-2022

The Extended Country Program Evaluation (XCPE) for Costa Rica will analyze two successive Bank strategies and the IDB Group program with the country, covering the 2015-2022 period. This will be the sixth OVE evaluation of the IDB Group's program with Costa Rica. Previous country program evaluations (CPEs) covered the periods 1990-2001 (document RE-277), 2002-2006 (document RE-325), 2006-2010 (document RE-377), 2011-2014 (document RE-472-1), and 2015-2018 (document RE-535-4). In this sixth evaluation, the first extended one, OVE will cover the 2015-2022 period (corresponding to the country strategies for 2015-2018 and 2019-2022), providing an independent evaluation of the relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability of the IDB Group program and strategies in Costa Rica. The analysis will encompass the financial and nonfinancial products made available to the country (details provided in Section II(C). The objective is for the findings and recommendations of the evaluation to be used as inputs in preparing the new IDB Group strategy with Costa Rica for the 2023-2026 period.