A Note on the MCC Selection Process for 2005

On August 31, 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) announced some modest changes in the process it will use to select countries for MCC eligibility in FY 2005. This note appraises those changes, focusing on the "school completion rate" and "inflation" indicators. It comments on possible future changes in the process, both in terms of the indicators and the country candidate list. It also discusses the Board’s use of discretion in going beyond the indicators, with particular reference to some of the decisions made for the first-round qualifying countries as announced in May 2004. This is a companion paper to “Round Two of the MCA: Which Countries are Most Likely to Qualify.”