Interim evaluation

Recommendations an Agreed Follow Up Measures

This agreement reflects an understanding among the core partners¹ at completion point of the Bokeo Food Security Project to adopt and use the lessons learned and recommendations formulated in the report.

Agriculture and livelihoods improvement

People's food security and their perception of living standards is based primarily on their ability to be self sufficient in rice, other food, and income from non-timber forest products, livestock and other sources. It is therefore very important to support poor families in their effort to improve their livelihoods through improvement of rice cultivation and yields, improvement of non-timber forest product (NTFP) collection, domestication, harvesting and marketing, control of animal diseases and improvement of animal husbandry and generation of income from non-farm sources. This is particularly the case for highland families who are dependent on low yield shifting agriculture.

Recommendations

Support to sustainable irrigated rice production should be a priority in highland areas where feasible as it is an important means of stabilizing shifting agriculture.

The introduction and/or expansion of other high value highland produce, improvement of NTFP collection, domestication, harvesting and marketing of NTFPs, control of animal diseases and improvement of animal husbandry should be strongly encouraged and supported, as they provide important income sources alternative to poppy cultivation.

The role of Village Veterinary Workers (VVWs) is in the process of being expanded from animal disease treatment and vaccination to basic husbandry improvements (Village Livestock Workers). This process should be strongly supported. The Village Livestock Workers are expected to operate their businesses on a user-pay and self-financing basis.

A well-focused extension system with effective participatory and demand driven delivery mechanisms should be established to deliver required services to farmers, particularly in the upland area.

Agreed follow-up measures

The Government and IFAD will focus development investments in highland areas.

The Government shall ensure that the development of irrigated rice production with incremental command areas in the highlands is included as the highest priority in future projects.

Regarding irrigation, Government and IFAD will target the poorest farmers with no previous access to irrigated land; at least 75 % of the total funding for irrigation should benefit the target group.

IFAD will finance the development of improved collection and cultivation techniques and marketing of NTFPs.

The Government will take a gradual approach towards stabilization of shifting agriculture, with consideration given to both their policy goal, the process, and the time needed for the successful introduction of alternative livelihoods for the farmers who are affected by this policy. Where necessary, the land allocation programme in the upland project area should be based on the availability of adequate alternative sources of income provided to the upland farmers.

In future, IFAD funds will be used for irrigation development only after land certificates have been issued to the beneficiaries. The Interim Evaluation strongly recommends that the CISP should address this issue and support such a process; IFAD resources will only be invested in land allocated to beneficiaries who fit the targeting criteria agreed between the government, IFAD and other partners.

Any land certificate process will in future be implemented in a gender sensitive manner, with certificates in the names of both men and women in the case of couples.

The concerned agencies of the government will follow a participatory approach and provide intensive community mobilization, organization, training and follow up to the Water Users' Groups (WUGs) during the process of survey, design and construction of the irrigation facilities so that the WUGs will be functional and fully responsible for the operation and maintenance of the completed schemes.

The Government, with assistance from IFAD and other partners, will develop programmes to expand the number, capacity and competence of Village Veterinary Workers, ensuring better gender balance of trainees and practitioners.

With assistance from interested partners, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry should undertake a systematic review of the ongoing experience and practices of VVWs and vaccine supply and pharmaceutical supply in the rural areas of the country in order to formulate policies and legislation on: (i) regulation, licensing and registration of both the VVWs and their associations; and (ii) development and establishment of private vaccine cold chains and pharmaceutical supplies.

Marketing and trade

This project has promoted a number of new crops (mainly fruit trees and vegetables) in communities where they are not traditionally part of the farming systems. In some cases this has been done without investigating the marketing potential. As a result farmers complained about the difficulties they experienced in marketing the produce, which discourages them from expanding the production of these crops or trying out other innovations.

Recommendation

The presence of a real market demand for produce should be investigated before the introduction and extension of any new crops.

The Government trade policies should encourage production of marketable agricultural produce and in particular high value NTFPs.

Agreed follow-up measure

The Government will in future promote new crops after examining their marketing potential.

Sustainability of project investments and civil service reform

Sustainability of project investments depends on:

• the capacity of Government institutions to continue to perform their functions and deliver services to the target group over the long term;
• the Government's capacity to sustain the financing of the investment and recurrent development expenditures of the civil service after project completion; and
• the community's capacity to operate and maintain investments.

The first point requires that capacity building (including training in technical and management aspects and in participatory development) be an integral part of the development programme so that the public service providers will be able to sustain the delivery of effective services to the clients in a participatory and demand driven manner. The second requires that civil service staff be paid salaries adequate to maintaining a reasonable standard of living. And the third requires that communities have the necessary competence and commitment, which can be acquired through participatory development, social mobilization, and regular training and follow up.

Recommendations

The Government will agree to use highly concessional loans (such as IFAD's) to finance, as necessary, capacity building measures within the scope of rural development and poverty reduction programmes. This includes short- and long-term domestic and overseas training and national, regional and international technical assistance in essential areas.

The Government should adjust its staff numbers and their salary scales to ensure that qualified staff are adequately paid and available, particularly at district and provincial level to deliver their services to the clients.

The Government and IFAD should identify areas where the private sector can complement activities carried out by civil service staff

If appropriate, incentives should be paid to staff posted in remote areas where living conditions are particularly difficult by national standards.

The government should formulate enabling legislation on rural user groups established under rural development programmes in the country, such as irrigation and drinking water supply, so that they can possess, operate and maintain the relevant facilities.

Agreed follow-up measures

The Government and IFAD will review staffing plans for the Community Initiatives Support Project (CISP) and redesign them in accordance with the above recommendations as appropriate.

The Government will give top priority to civil service reform and revise civil service salaries and structure to ensure that essential staff are retained at reasonable salaries and will divest other activities to the private sector where possible. Regular assessments will be made by the Government to improve efficiency of its civil service staff.

The Government will only approve foreign aid supported projects insofar as they are designed to be sustainable beyond project life. Before approving a project, it will ensure that financing of necessary staff is sustainable in the long run.

As part of the civil service reform process the Government should constantly seek to improve its capacity to finance incentives, bonuses and staff expenses. Such expenses should be made part of the Government Budget both during this present project and after project completion.

Decentralization

The process of decentralization is difficult. Although an increased capacity among province and district level staff to manage project activities has been observed, the necessary implementation capability is still far from adequate. This has been illustrated by irregular monitoring and evaluation, and slow loan disbursement. The latter has been a cause for concern for the Evaluation Mission as well as for previous Supervision Missions and the Mid-Term Review. Therefore, further capacity building and extensive training is still needed at provincial, district and community level. As decentralization is a major component of increased beneficiary participation, future projects should take the complexities of the process into consideration with respect to design and implementation.

Recommendation

32. The Government and its development partners should give local government staff the necessary support to enable decentralization to be implemented effectively and to efficiently serve the needs of the rural poor, in particular that:

• training be given to village leaderships, district civil service and, as necessary, provincial civil service staff, in management and technical aspects, as well as participatory approaches and poverty-reducing methodologies;
• qualified and highly competent central and provincial government staff be redeployed to the provinces and districts according to need;
• accountable and financial management systems and procedures be developed to ensure that poverty reduction policies are implemented transparently, and that community members, where possible be involved in decision making processes; and
• project management and implementation procedures should be decentralized to provincial and district levels.

Future IFAD-funded projects take into consideration the real speed of implementation and prepare disbursement schedules and total loan sizes accordingly.

Agreed Follow-up measures

The Government and IFAD will ensure that the CISP is designed with realistic investments and project period. One purpose of the Appraisal Mission of the CISP should be to ensure that the proposed overall size of the CISP is adjusted to the demonstrated disbursement capacity.

In cooperation with relevant project partners the Government will prepare a full staffing schedule and training plan by district in all relevant subjects for existing line agency staff involved in the ongoing and new IFAD financed projects. These schedules will be discussed with IFAD and other agencies in order to design, plan and budget accordingly for the required further training.

Training plans need to be aimed at problem solving, focusing on solving the problems of the proposed beneficiaries; they should also be targeted more towards upland operations.

The Government will examine staff needs at district and provincial levels and, where possible, re-deploy central and provincial government staff to the district level where they will be most needed.

The Government will delegate more authority to the district and village levels in areas of planning, financing and implementation. It will develop more effective procedures and systems of financial reporting, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for accountability and transparency. It will establish accountable systems and procedures to implement government policy on decentralization. The village level should be involved in the planning and implementation processes as much as possible.

Partnerships

Due to weakness in project design, unclearly defined working procedures between the technical assistance (TA) team and its national counterparts, coupled with a lack of coordination by the provincial authorities, cofinancing with GTZ has been a source of problems throughout project implementation with effectively a bi-cephalous situation.

Recommendation

40. In future, measures should be taken from project design onwards throughout to the end of project implementation to ensure that a cofinanced project has only one management to whom all cofinanciers are answerable. All field staff, regardless of by whom they are paid, should answer to the coordinator designated by the government for the project. This coordinator could be the Project Director or the head of a government institution.

The advantages and drawbacks as well as the policy of cofinancing should be examined by IFAD. The Government should also examine the comparative benefits of single- and multi-donor project financing in the country and review its policies accordingly.

Both the central and provincial Government should take a proactive and lead role in managing and coordinating development partners and the projects they finance in the province. Taking particular care to supervise and coordinate project implementation and take prompt action to resolve any differences that might arise between the different partners, be they national or international.

Clear and specific working and reporting procedures for external partners and their national counterparts should be agreed and defined by all parties in the early stage of project design.

Agreed Follow-up measures

The Government and all the partners shall design the CISP and future projects in accordance with the above recommendations and take strong measures to ensure that future projects are managed by a single head.

To support the government in poverty reduction, cofinancing by GTZ, IFAD and other partners will take place within the framework of a single area-based rural development project in Bokeo. Project coordination should be headed by the Government, with different partners financing different project activities according to their respective advantages within the same project management structure. All the partners share the same goal, objectives and outputs of the project and the strategy to achieve them. The project will have a common Annual Work Programme and Budget, follow the same institutional and implementation arrangements during implementation and target the same villages and districts.

All partners of the project will coordinate with each other and with the national and provincial governments in areas of planning, budgeting, management, operation and implementation of the project. All partners and staff will work under the coordination and leadership of the Government of Lao PDR, the provincial authorities and their designated representatives and organizations in project implementation.

The TA Team of GTZ and all other potential cofinanciers in the project will work under the overall leadership and coordination of the Provincial Government, starting from 15 November 2001 when the appraisal mission ends its field work, and will report to the Project Director, concurrently the Deputy Director of the Provincial Department of Planning and Cooperation. The Deputy Director is designated by the Provincial Government to be responsible for project coordination and management in the province. An agreement will be drafted and discussed by all potential external partners to provide for, inter alia, the working and reporting procedures for external partners and their national counterparts during project implementation. This arrangement will be reviewed by the Appraisal Mission and the agreement will enter into effect by the date of IFAD loan effectiveness.

Both the Central and Provincial Government will take a proactive and lead role in managing and coordinating development partners in project implementation in the province, and will take prompt action to resolve any differences that may arise between the different partners, be they national or international.

Project supervision

Different supervision missions have indeed identified some of the major implementation problems of this project, particularly in areas of coordination between different partners, slow implementation, targeting and participatory issues, as well as concerning the irrigation development and agricultural development components. However, supervision has only to a lesser degree succeeded in solving these problems. Large problems persist to this day, especially with regard to project management and project coordination between project partners.

Recommendation

In future projects UNOPS should provide more regular and timely implementation support to the project, focusing equally on all aspects of implementation issues and constraints and not just on disbursement and procurement procedures. In particular, supervision should support management and assist it to improve targeting and participation, as well as provide direction and attention to newly arising issues, such as investment in agricultural production, and marketing. It should provide support to staff in monitoring and assessment of impact of project activities on the target group.

Agreed follow-up measure

IFAD and UNOPS should make sure that supervision missions have the right composition, and more importantly that they take place twice annually or at the very least every 9 months. The project Support office (PSO) suggests that supervision missions should take place during AWPB sessions in June/July.

IFAD should review its financing of supervision to ensure that it can be increased as required by the specific implementation conditions of each project.

The central government and UNOPS should ensure that supervision missions include staff members of the concerned government agency to assist the missions in their work. In addition, the central government should closely supervise and monitor project implementation and provide support to the provincial authorities as necessary.

Targeting and participation

As part of the overall project strategy of targeting the poorest, support for ethnic communities has been one of the major achievements of this project. However, even more effort needs to be made in reaching the poorest members of the communities, as these have not benefited from the project as much as they should have done. Women could have benefited more economically from the project if special attention had been paid to their concerns. Although their presence in Village Development Committees has been increased by the project, they may also be losing social status, as they are not included in some of the formal and non-formal institutions supported by the project, like Water Users' Groups.

Recommendations

The Government, IFAD and other partners should pay greater practical attention to gender issues in implementation, both with respect to project beneficiaries and to recruitment of project staff. Clear targets must be set for more equitable gender representation in both these areas.

The Government, IFAD and other partners should pay greater attention to the culture of ethnic minorities and try to include project measures that will retain the positive aspects of these cultures without hindering development.

Greater efforts should be systematically made in project implementation to ensure that poorer people within the community are given priority for project support.

The Government, IFAD and other partners should set up mechanisms to ensure adequate participation of the poor and underprivileged community members in project implementation. These mechanisms should be verifiable and included among the items to be monitored regularly.

Agreed follow-up measure

The Government, IFAD and other partners will set clear targets for mainstreaming gender at community level, among staff in projects and in the decentralized implementation agencies, in particular:

• land certificates should be written in the names of both husband and wife in the case of couples;
• at least 30% of community investments should be requested by women for activities which are of primary concern to women;
• in communities and at district level, at least 40% of trainees should be women;
• decision-making bodies at community level will include at least 40% women; and
• project staff should include at least 30% women in technical and professional positions.

The Government will increase the number of people from ethnic groups among project and civil service staff.

The Government will strengthen participation of the poorest in the community, by requiring that they have better access to resources and that they be included in decision-making bodies.

The Government will monitor project implementation paying special attention to gender and the poorest within the community, ensuring that both these groups gain from the development process. The monitoring process will involve sex-disaggregated data.

Gender awareness training will be included in all training and capacity building programmes. The government should ensure that the LWU play an active role in all poverty alleviation programmes, with all the necessary support.

Ethnic minority staff will educate their non-ethnic minority colleagues in the cultural features of their group, to ensure that policies are designed and implemented in a culturally sensitive manner.

With assistance from IFAD, the Government will organize and finance training for project staff and local government personnel in participatory mechanisms to enable them to cooperate better with community members.

Male and female community members will be given the necessary training to enable them to be assertive and take the lead in their relationships and negotiation with service providers, including Government institutions. Training in participatory mechanisms will be given in all communities where rural development projects operate. IFAD will continue to finance such training in projects.

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1/ The Core Learning Partnership (CLP) comprises the Government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (State Planning Committee, SPC); Ministry of Finance (MOF); Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF); Ministry of Communications, Transport, Post and Construction (MCTPC); Ministry of Education (MOE); Ministry of Health (MOH); Lao Women's Union (LWU); Provincial Steering Committee (PSC); Department of Planning and Cooperation (DPC); Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO); Provincial Irrigation Service (PIS); District Agriculture and Forestry Office (DAFO); Department of Communications, Transport, Post and Construction (DCTPC); Project Support Office (PSO); GTZ; IFAD, PI (Asian Office); and IFAD, Office of Evaluation and Studies (OE).