Institutional and cost implications of multi-project baselines

Starting from a theoreticalnotion of capacity building this paperfocuses on the implications ofmulti-project baselines for costs andinstitutions. Availability of data and thelevel of data aggregation determine to alarge extent the cost of derivingmulti-project baselines. For localinstitutions this implies that theircapacity development needs are linked todecisions made on strictness of baselines.The initial higher costs of multi-projectcalculations in the development stage areeasily offset once more projects will usesuch a baseline. This paper argues theseinitial demands are not as high asexpected. Multi-project approaches willreduce transaction costs, especially forsmall-scale projects, will reducevalidation costs and likely reduce humanresource demands in other stages of theproject cycle.