This is the fifth Annual Report on Results and Impact of IFAD Operations (ARRI) prepared by the Office of Evaluation (OE). It synthesizes the main results and impacts from the 15 IFAD-funded projects evaluated by OE in 2006, and also draws upon the findings of three corporate-level and three country programme evaluations.

In addition to providing a comprehensive account of the results and impact of the evaluated operations, this year's ARRI report focuses more generally on learning, with the purpose of identifying the main determinants of performance and results. In short, it attempts to ask and answer the broad questions: “What was the performance?” and “Why was performance as it was?”

A review of previous ARRI reports by a professional statistician noted that a comparison of 2006 ratings with previous years - and indeed any comparison from year to year - was unreliable because of the small size and non-random nature of the sample. As a consequence, this year's report places less emphasis on such year-by-year comparisons. As in the past, however, it provides a summary of the 2006 evaluation data, plus an overview of the performance and impact of a larger sample, namely the 73 projects evaluated by OE over the period 2002-2006 and contained in the four previous editions.

With regard to learning, this ARRI report includes a specific section (6) devoted to two themes: sustainability and innovation, which emerged in past reports as areas in need of  attention. The report builds on the inputs generated in two in-house learning workshops with IFAD Management and staff, and makes recommendations on how performance might be enhanced in these two key areas.