An evaluation approach for development agency financial supports by using effectiveness criteria

Regional Development Agencies aim to enhance sustainable development in their region by a variety of financial support programs. The agencies' purpose is to accelerate economic and social development in the priority sectors designated in the region. To ensure the effectiveness of the grants by means of support programs, it is important that the regional impacts of these financial supports are to be analyzed and a monitoring-evaluation approach is to be developed for the feedback process. In this study, the result-oriented monitoring and evaluation system is presented within scope of the five evaluation criteria such as relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. By using this system, a sectoral effectiveness estimation approach was developed in order to determine how the project outputs have contributed to the project purposes. The developed approach consists of 5 phases such as establishment of data set, analyzing nominal change, analyzing additionality, weighting priority criteria using AHP and estimating the effectiveness of sectors. The sectoral effectiveness estimation approach was applied on a real case that contains 59 SME investment projects supported by Silkroad Development Agency in Southeastern Anatolia Region in Turkey. According to this application result, that beverages and chemicals & chemical products sectors have conspicuously dominance and have highest effectiveness value in all sectors can be said. Thus, by using the developed approach, priority sectors can be identified efficiently for the next financial support programs. As a conclusion, it is expected that this approach will be a substantial implementation tool to determine the priorities of the support programs for the achievement of development agency regional plans. Key Words: Development Agency, Evaluation, Effectiveness, Additionality, AHP.