THE World Bank and IMF intend to monitor the impact of aid programmes on poverty reduction more closely and will strengthen cooperation with other donors and civil society to ensure programmes have the desired effect, senior officials said on Tuesday. “It sounds very simple but it represents a major change,” John Page of the Bank’s economic policies department said. “Aid agencies tend to focus on inputs rather than impacts. Intermediate goalposts are a way of measuring success,” he added. Page and other Bank and International Monetary Fund officials were addressing a news conference on the sidelines of a seminar in Ivory Coast on poverty reduction. The IMF announced the change of emphasis at the end of 1999 when its soft loan Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility was rebaptised the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility. Critics had contended the IMF was too concerned with macoeconomic variables, losing sight of the goal of poverty reduction.