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Documented examples

Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.

Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 742 of 742 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.

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3 of 742 deliveries

Adaptability

2 deliveries linked to Institutional responsiveness, Disaster preparedness and recovery.

Sri Lankasince 2022delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness

Emergency cash transfer top-ups after the 2022 default

After Sri Lanka suspended external debt service on 12 April 2022, the government topped up Samurdhi and categorical cash transfers to Rs 5,000 to 7,500 per family per month from May to December 2022 for 2.5 million existing recipients and 0.8 million waitlisted recipients, raising spending on these programmes to Rs 142 billion in 2022.

3.3 million recipients, recipients of crisis top-up or additional cash transfers, may to december 2022 (2.5 million existing plus 0.8 million waitlisted), 2022-12. 142 billion Sri Lankan rupees (0.6 percent of GDP), spending on the four main social safety net programmes in 2022, 2022. International Monetary Fund, Country Report No. 23/116, Sri Lanka: Request for an Extended Arrangement Under the Extended Fund Facility (staff report and Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies), retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The government used the existing Samurdhi and categorical allowance rolls, plus the waiting list of households already screened but not enrolled, to add a flat monthly top-up within weeks of the debt standstill, with multilateral emergency loans paying for it.

Preconditions

  • Existing transfer rolls and a waiting list of pre-screened households
  • Emergency multilateral financing available within weeks of a default
  • Payment channels that kept working during the 2022 fuel shortages

Limits: The recipient counts and the Rs 142 billion are the government's own statement in its Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (attached to the Letter of Intent of 6 March 2023), published by the IMF, not an IMF measurement; the 3.3 million is our sum of the 2.5 and 0.8 million, which the staff report also gives as about 3.3 million beneficiaries at end-2022. The eLibrary HTML has no page numbers. The top-ups were financed by emergency assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, so the speed reflects donor money as well as the government's decision. The source gives the months, not the date of first payment, so the elapsed time from the April 2022 debt standstill to payment is known only to within a month or two. The staff report itself says the real value of cash transfers eroded in 2022, with poorer households facing higher inflation, and that Samurdhi targeting was poor (38 percent of the poorest quintile covered in 2019, 12 percent of the richest receiving transfers), so the speed of the top-up does not show that the money reached the right households. The 2023 replacement of Samurdhi by the Aswesuma scheme is a separate, slower reform and is not covered here.

Sri Lankasince 2005delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery

Owner-driven housing reconstruction after the 2004 tsunami

Sri Lanka's government paid owner-driven cash grants through two state banks, with IDA refinancing, to 47,864 Phase I beneficiaries after the December 2004 tsunami, of whom a 100 percent audit found 44,944 eligible, and the physical completion rate for Phase I houses was 94 percent when the programme closed in September 2008.

47,864 beneficiaries, phase i homeowner-driven beneficiaries supported with ida financing, 2008-09-30. 94 %, physical completion rate for phase i houses, 2008-09-30. World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report, Sri Lanka Tsunami Emergency Recovery Program, 30 June 2009, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The government paid fixed cash grants in tranches through two state banks to households rebuilding on their own land, with divisional secretaries certifying eligibility and IDA refinancing the banks.

Preconditions

  • State banks with branches in every affected division
  • A buffer-zone policy settled enough to know who rebuilds where
  • Local administrations able to certify eligibility and progress

Where else it has been used: The ICR names Pakistan's 2005 earthquake programme (pak-erra-housing) as built on this model.

Limits: Both figures are in paragraph 2.2.6 of the ICR (printed pages 6 to 7), read from the plain-text version. They cover Phase I houses outside the coastal buffer zone only, about 68 percent of the homeowner programme's Phase I, not the whole national reconstruction of more than 110,000 damaged houses, and the donor-driven programme is excluded. About 6 percent of those paid were found ineligible, section 2.4.6 reports that 93 percent of beneficiaries with unfinished houses in the north and east named insufficient funds as the obstacle, and Annex 2 reports further damage to reconstructed houses after hostilities resumed in 2006, especially in Vaharai in Batticaloa District. The completion rate is from the government's own monitoring, reported by the World Bank. The figures describe recovery from one event and not warning or evacuation.

Building

1 delivery linked to Large project delivery.

Sri Lankasince 2003delivered and closedbears on Large project delivery

Southern Expressway (Southern Transport Development Project)

Sri Lanka's Road Development Authority built the country's first access-controlled expressway, about 126 km from Kottawa to Godagama. Sections I to III opened on 26 November 2011 and section IV on 15 March 2014. The project took 13 years against a planned six. Its total cost rose from US$295.9 million at the 1999 appraisal to US$906.5 million at completion in 2014, partly because it was widened from two to four lanes.

906.5 US$ million, actual total project cost at completion, 2014. 295.9 US$ million, total project cost estimated at the 1999 appraisal (two-lane design), 1999. Asian Development Bank, Completion Report, Sri Lanka: Southern Transport Development Project (Project 26522, Loans 1711 and 2413), August 2014, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The Road Development Authority ran one project management unit for an expressway financed in sections by ADB, JICA, the Nordic Development Fund and later China Exim. When prices rose and the design changed, it went back to the lenders for a supplementary loan instead of cutting the scope.

Preconditions

  • Several concessional lenders willing to finance one corridor in parallel and to top up after a cost overrun
  • Land acquisition and resettlement capacity, whose absence caused most of the early delay
  • A design finalized before contract award, which this project lacked and which ADB names as its main lesson

Where else it has been used: The same Road Development Authority model was reused for the Colombo-Katunayake Expressway (2013), the Outer Circular Highway and the Southern Expressway extension to Hambantota (2020), mostly with Chinese loans instead of multilateral ones.

Limits: The cost growth is not a like-for-like overrun. In 2008 the scope was widened from a two-lane road to four lanes, and against the 2008 re-appraisal of $757.7 million the overrun is about 20 percent, not about 206 percent. Both ratios are our computation from the report's figures. The cost table is sourced to the borrower's own completion report (Government of Sri Lanka, 2011), and ADB, as lender, judges a project it financed. The PCR's cost-by-financier table puts China Exim at $159.48 million within the $906.47 million total, so the section it financed is included. The schedule figure (13 years against six) runs from the 1999 approval and includes four years of design and land acquisition before construction.