Georgia became a member of ADB in 2007. The Municipal Services Development Project, approved in September 2008, was the first Asian Development Bank operation in the country. A year after project approval, at the government’s request, ADB approved the Phase 2 in 2009, to provide additional financing to rehabilitate poorly maintained infrastructure due to lack of investment and maintenance post-independence from the Soviet Union.

Impact evaluations go beyond the standard project assessment criteria and add value by explicitly estimating the development impact of interventions on the intended beneficiaries. This impact evaluation aims to add to the thin evidence on the impact of cost-shared, community-based water supply and sanitation interventions in small towns. It also aims to fill broader knowledge and evidence gaps on the institutional and non-health impacts of water supply and sanitation interventions.

The project was designed to improve water supply and sanitation services and improve hygiene through the replacement of aging and deteriorating infrastructure, hygiene promotion, and institutional support.

The impacts of natural disasters are seldom factored into the determinants of development effectiveness. This is partly because these calamities have been considered to be purely natural phenomena outside the scope of policy interventions. As a result, relief and reconstruction are taken into account, but the need for prevention and preemptive action is underemphasized.