In 2015, the IDB Office of Evaluation and Oversight undertook an analysis of the design and use of policy-based lending at IDB. Although it found countries used PBL for various reasons, the predominant use was for budget support in time of need. While countries valued the policy dialogue and technical expertise that came with IDB PBL, the policy elements were usually secondary to the primacy of budget support. Although PBL provided important financial support, its ability to play a countercyclical role overall was limited because of the cap on PBL and because PBL could not be disbursed if borrowers did not have a positive macroeconomic assessment. The review assessed the depth of the policy conditions and found that most were of low- or medium-depth, meaning they helped set in motion policy reforms but could not by themselves effect lasting changes. Conditions tended to gain in depth in the second and third loan of a programmatic series, as the underlying reform program progressed. However, over one third of programmatic PBL programs active in 2005–2019 were interrupted, affecting the depth of supported programs. Policy conditions were of higher depth in programs in the financial and energy sectors and during times of crisis. Neither the number of conditions in a program nor the loan size were correlated with program depth