IEG has recently completed a meta-evaluation of the CGIAR as part of an overall evaluation of the Bank's involvement in 70 global programs. At $50 million a year of completely unrestricted funds, the CGIAR currently receives 40 percent of the Development Grant Facility (DGF) grants going to global programs out of the Bank's net income. Increasing competition for such grants to meet a variety of global challenges and the need for selectivity were among the factors leading IEG to review the Bank's involvement in global programs, including in the CGIAR.

IEG concludes that the CGIAR has been a unique instrument of international cooperation. Its productivity-enhancing research has had sizeable impacts on reducing poverty by increasing employment, raising incomes, lowering food prices, and releasing land from cropping. Moreover, further improvements in sustainable agricultural productivity are critical to meet the international community's Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015.

But the CGIAR is facing huge challenges, and it is less focused on enhancing agricultural productivity than it used to be. Its current mix of activities reflects neither its comparative advantage nor its core competence. The

CGIAR has not responded sufficiently at the System level to the biotechnology revolution, the increasing importance of intellectual property rights, and the growth of private sector research. And the current reforms in the CGIAR's organizational structure, governance, and management do not go far enough to address the challenges arising from the radically changed external and internal environment facing the CGIAR.