By: Staff Writer
June 5, 2026
Abdulhamid Alkhalifa, president of the OPEC Fund for International Development, said at the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) 56th Annual Meeting being held at the Baha Mar resort in The Bahamas, said that when measuring developmental success, a lot is dependent on the happiness in the recipients who receive aid.
Alkhalifa also said it is not about the bank’s balance sheet, or strategies it implements but it is very important to keep this in mind the happiness of the recipients at the end of it all and “maximizing our impact is our problem to solve as MDBs (Multilateral Development Banks), it is not maximizing profit.”
Daniel Best, president of the CDB, also said: “We can’t do it all, so that the importance of originating transfer and our balance sheet can’t handle all of it either, so that is an important model, and this is why you know we have these MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding), and this is why we’re looking at how our areas of cooperation we can, we can operate in a more aligned manner, and in terms of the gap between design and and outcomes, I think we have a significant role to play in that space, as MDBs.”
Best added: “We’ve got a lot of shovel worthy projects, but not necessarily shovel ready, but we take a lot of shovel-worthy projects and try to move them forward, and then we get to a point that where the outcomes aren’t really what we envisaged they would have been, and so in the MDB community, we are called to undertake that rigor of analysis an upfront rigor assessment to determine exactly what we hope to achieve, such that they can actually benefit people and impact lives.”
Gisela Sanchez, president of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, also said: “First of all, I think we have to improve in terms of transparency and accountability. If we can demonstrate results together, like the countries and the banks, we can go further. That will be my first point.
“Second, to be as efficient as possible with the resources, if they are coming from the private sector, or from other sources, we have to demonstrate that we are as efficient as possible and I agree with the president Best that we have to be part of the implementation, holding hands with the institutions that will execute the projects in order to make sure that the results will be achieved, and if I can add something else, we have a tremendous opportunity to maximize impact.”
MDBs primarily measure impact by shifting from simple credit-centric risk models to comprehensive evaluation frameworks. They also assess interventions using specific socioeconomic and environmental indicators, real-time community data, and standardized scorecards to ensure alignment with global and regional development goals.