Enabling poor rural people
to overcome poverty
Programme effectiveness and impact
Project implementation, in physical terms, has been slow. For the second generation rural development projects where the process is complex and participatory, implementation is likely to take even longer.
These projects have generally had a delayed start up. This is caused by several factors including: the involvement of multiple line agencies; the administrative capacity of these agencies especially in remote areas; and the requirements of reaching specific target groups and ensuring their participation.
As a result, loan disbursements have not kept pace with loan approvals, even when cancellations due to reformulation are taken into consideration. In fact, there has been a continuous and sharp decline in the average annual disbursement of loans, for the period 1985-1994. Frequent cancellation of relatively large loan balances occurred for a variety of reasons: depreciation of the national currency, cancellation of procurement, failure of GOP to meet cofinanciers' conditions, failure to implement specific components and managerial problems.
Projects with components such as tubewell installation, watercourse renovation and tractor distribution - in high demand by powerful interest groups - have had considerable budgetary support; and for most of them implementation was adequate. The more recent projects which have adopted an innovative participatory approach and targeting perspective have generally faced start up problems, and have a slow rate of implementation and disbursement.
An attempt to assess the social distribution of project benefits could only be done with first generation projects, as those are the projects which have been or are nearly completed. These projects have generally had a positive impact on agricultural productivity and cropping intensities. Productivity increases, while sometimes below expectation, are primarily an outcome of the use of high yielding variety (HYV) seed, supplementary irrigation and fertilizer application, with credit playing a catalytic role.
The evaluation mission reached the conclusion that in the first generation projects, the target groups of most concern to IFAD, did not derive their fair share of the projects' benefits. Those projects did not generally target small and marginal farmers in any particular way, which only confirms the need for specific targeting mechanisms, such as those developed for the second generation projects, to reach more effectively these disadvantaged groups.
Rural women were given insufficient attention in the first generation projects. Women's activities have been frequently incorporated into the second generation projects but even so, they have been allotted significantly less investment or staff when compared to their important participation in agriculture, particularly in livestock production and domestic economy.
Certain types of interventions render targeting by excluding the relatively well off, either impractical and/or irrelevant. Cases in point include mini-dams, ponds and irrigation channels. In such cases involving collective investment - which are often most needed - it is much more effective to give priority to poor villages or communities than to poor households. This may still prove insufficient, however, particularly when the distribution of productive assets within the village is markedly skewed. In these cases, additional measures must be taken to ensure proper targeting. These measures involve introducing income-generating activities that are particularly relevant to households without assets.
Project organization and management
A key element in the project strategies, particularly for second generation projects, has been to assist national institutions reorient some of their activities towards the needs of the target group. In so doing, however, certain functions have been assigned to line agencies which did not have adequate implementation capacity and appropriate expertise in the field. The distribution of responsibilities could also conflict with existing mandates and legal jurisdiction.
The complexity of organizational structures has been a major cause of delay in project implementation. Firstly, it requires a high level of coordination both vertically and horizontally. Secondly, it leads to numerous unsolicited interventions which result both in delays in implementation and in the diversion of project resources and benefits to non-targeted beneficiaries.
Implementation problems include:
(i) difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified staff because of inadequate incentives and career development, especially for project managers; this has been a major cause of poor field planning and supervision; and
(ii) competition for project resources within and outside the project structure.
Technical assistance (TA) has been mainly engaged in first generation projects, particularly those with important engineering and infrastructure components. In subsequent projects, some technical support to the projects was provided either by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or by experts, whether national or international. When TA was provided as a component financed as a parallel TA project, it has led to a dichotomy in the managerial structure which strained relationships and impinged on implementation.
In line with the Agreement Establishing IFAD, a Cooperating Institution (CI) is appointed by the Fund to administer the loans. It was found that there is an overall favourable trend over time to an increased level of supervision. CIs have mostly entrusted supervision to their staff, relying little on consultants.
The Fund took part, through staff or consultants, in 65% of all supervision missions. This is remarkably higher than the average level of participation, which was estimated at only 31% by the Thematic Study on IFAD's relationship with its CIs conducted in 1993. In addition, IFAD has undertaken around 25 missions to follow-up supervision missions which have proved to be extremely important.
This intense effort is also a reflection of the continuing implementation problems faced by the projects.
Monitoring beneficiaries has been given low priority with the result that little is available on target groups' perceptions, their adoption of improved technology, and changes in productivity and income during project implementation.
For effective management there is a need to ensure autonomy, continuity, incentives and coordination. The Project Manager is one of the keys to project success; and IFAD should ensure that the concerned authorities select a competent, committed and motivated person. There is no conclusive evidence on the most suitable background of such managers i.e. a District Management Group (DMG) or a professional. But in all cases such persons should receive training in the management of rural development, and donor-funded projects. The incentive package for project personnel in remote rural areas is important. Donors, including IFAD, may adopt a unified pay scale, through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and obtain the necessary government approval.
With time, the government has become reluctant to use TA especially if funded from loan proceeds. In the light of actual experience, GOP may wish to adopt a more flexible position on the incorporation of TA into the loan packages.
Planning Commission Form I (PC I) should be prepared concurrently and in harmony with the donor (IFAD) project documents e.g. the Staff Appraisal Report (SAR). However, IFAD should ensure that the PC I incorporates major understandings and agreements prior to loan negotiations. At the same time, GOP should be persuaded to make the PC I a more flexible document and adjustable when necessary, as agreed upon in the Annual Work Programme (AWP).
Arguably, individual provincial governments have different attitudes to the role of PC-1 and some of them might find it difficult to agree to modify the PC-1 at the moment of adoption of the Annual Work Plan.
While there is no question that intense supervision is in the interest of the projects, it is noted that supervision missions are not generally equipped, nor do they have the mandate, to look critically at the original designs. The undertaking of a few independent mid-term evaluations could help, particularly in the case of innovative participatory projects.
Many of the apparent reasons behind the low priority given to monitoring beneficiary activities can be grouped under the generic designation of "managerial weaknesses". Other explanations include conceptual and methodological problems associated with Monitoring and Management Information Systems in rural development projects. While these reasons cannot be dismissed, the real cause for this unsatisfactory situation is that it is still conceived that projects be implemented according to pre-established programmes and budgets, and not in response to emerging situations during implementation and to beneficiaries' reactions and expectations. Hence, for monitoring and evaluation to become truly a priority, there must be significant progress in participatory project planning and implementation.
Such progress will require time, since it involves a greater degree of flexibility in administrative and budgetary procedures. In the meantime, an improvement in the situation can be achieved by simple measures, such as:
(i) preparing a logical framework for the project at each stage of its design;
(ii) making the submission of a baseline survey by GOP a condition of loan disbursement in the project's second year;
(iii) part of the cost of data collection and processing should be covered by IFAD's resources and conducted under the Fund's responsibility, since IFAD is interested in learning from its own project experience;
(iv) creating, within IFAD, a mechanism for the review of baseline survey methodology and results; a similar mechanism could be installed for the examination of Mid-term Review reports;
(v) avoiding the over-ambitious design of M&E systems; training project managers and making them responsible for the design of a monitoring system tailored to their specific needs;2/
(vi) candidate project managers could be selected on the basis of their demonstrated ability to design the broad lines of a monitoring system;
(vii) supervision missions should be systematically expected to obtain from project management convincing evidence about target groups' reactions and perceptions of the project, at least once annually; and
(viii) loan agreements between IFAD and Governments should explicitly make provisions along the above.
2/ This could be done in the context of the IFAD-financed, Poverty Alleviation Training Programme for Asia and the Pacific Region (PATAP), provided managers are given substantive training in these aspects, beyond the simple sharing of their respective project experiences.