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Lesson
Review of the gender action plan (GAP) should be done within a year from loan effectiveness to facilitate the enhancement of both the GAP and project implementation. GAP implementation in Viet Nam was challenged by the late recruitment of a gender consultant, which prevented the EA/IA from receiving timely capacity-building inputs and limited the opportunity of the project to improve its gender equality design and targets.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Administration by a single team of future regional projects will enable better assessment of their regional impacts. The sector division in ADB headquarters delegated the administration of this project to respective resident missions after the midterm review in 2016. Country review missions were conducted separately after the delegation, causing discrepancies in loan financial management, safeguard compliance, and benefits and results monitoring. This led to difficulties in assessing the project's regional impacts.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Reduced counterpart funding and increased use of loan proceeds will facilitate timely implementation and project closure. This project was designed with substantial counterpart funding from governments. While demonstrating strong ownership, this affected implementation as the governments were unable to disburse the budget on time. Besides reducing the requirement for counterpart funding, sufficient documentation and incorporation of counterpart fund releases in the audited annual financial statements can help facilitate the financial closing of future projects.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Opportunities for knowledge exchange and sharing among resident mission staff need to be included in the design of regional projects. Regional cooperation and integration elements were not included in this project. As a result, resident mission staff missed the opportunity to share knowledge and exchange experiences that would have enhanced their capacities.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Establishment of professional project administration divisions and retention of experienced and trained government officials in these units can help mitigate the risk of project delays. Project implementation experienced substantial delays despite the preparation of time-bound action plans, project completion was still delayed by 60 months for Lao PDR and 48 months for Viet Nam. The recurrence of this experience in this project may be better addressed by putting in place professional project administration divisions, staffed by trained and experienced personnel.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Processing teams need to ensure that the scope and cost estimate of projects are realistic and reflect the actual contexts. Changes in the procurement plan and safeguards document necessitated by the revisions in project scope and costs caused startup delays. The Viet Nam component had a large amount of undisbursed budget because of overestimations in the cost of civil works and land acquisition and resettlement. Advance actions to engage critical consultants early enough should have helped mitigate the delays.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Providing targeted resources to ensure sufficient understanding of ADB procurement and project administration guidelines, particularly among first-time ADB executing and implementing agencies, will help avoid startup delays. Minor implementation startup delays were encountered because of the unfamiliarity of some first-time implementing agencies with ADB procurement, financial management, and disbursement procedures. But after trainings were provided and consultants mobilized, implementation accelerated significantly.

Project Number: 43120-013
Project Name: Trade Facilitation: Improved Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Handling in Greater Mekong Subregion Trade Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The requirement for counterpart funding to finance land acquisition and resettlement (LAR) should be clearly communicated to government counterparts during project preparation. Due to delayed and inadequate counterpart funds, particularly to support LAR, works were begun in several subprojects even before compensation payments were completed. This comprised noncompliance to ADB safeguards and caused the suspension of works in pertinent subprojects.

Project Number: 43319-022
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion East-West Economic Corridor Towns Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Projects at completion should ensure that there is clarity of mandates, responsibilities, and performance targets among institutions involved in the operation and maintenance (O&M) of project assets to minimize the risks to the sustainability of project benefits. The project supported the provincial government in clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the different government agencies and the private sector in O&M of the project sub-outputs.

Project Number: 43319-022
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion East-West Economic Corridor Towns Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Ensuring the sustainability of project benefits would require serious efforts from the component implementation units (CIUs) to raise funds from various sources. Governments have allocated annual budgets for CIUs to continue post-project operations. But financial sustainability is still a concern, as government allocations are sufficient to cover only routine facility maintenance and supplies and not surveillance, animal and pest outbreak responses, and repair of critical laboratory equipment.

Project Number: 43120-013
Project Name: Trade Facilitation: Improved Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Handling in Greater Mekong Subregion Trade Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Appropriate contract packaging, stakeholder involvement in project preparation, and reliable cost estimates are of particular importance to successful project implementation. This project encountered several weaknesses in design and preparation that made implementation challenging.

Project Number: 43319-022
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion East-West Economic Corridor Towns Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Continued capacity building is required for Cambodia and the Lao PDR to move to a higher level of technical capacity in handling sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) concerns. The project has strengthened SPS capacity in Cambodia and the Lao PDR and facilitated product-specific market access agreements with neighboring countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion. It strengthened academic aspects of SPS, which were nonexistent before the project. It enabled knowledge transfer in priority SPS areas from the training and day-to-day coaching provided by project consultants.

Project Number: 43120-013
Project Name: Trade Facilitation: Improved Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Handling in Greater Mekong Subregion Trade Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Unsynchronized consultant recruitment, procurement of goods, and facility upgrades could create inefficiencies and lead to a wastage of time and resources and delayed delivery of project benefits. While overall the project proceeded smoothly, it encountered some challenges that offer valuable lessons to future projects. First, as the timing of consultant inputs and procurement of laboratory facilities and equipment were not synchronized, i.e., consultants would arrive early while facilities were not yet ready, less-than-efficient inputs were obtained.

Project Number: 43120-013
Project Name: Trade Facilitation: Improved Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Handling in Greater Mekong Subregion Trade Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A thorough needs assessment is necessary to align the livelihood restoration training programs to the needs of severely affected households (SAHs) and so increase their uptake of the programs. Only a few SAHs attended the livelihood restoration programs designed to support them. The opportunity cost in terms of farmers’ time was high either because the SAHs were involved in more rewarding economic activities, or the trainings did not respond to their needs.

Project Number: 40190-023
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project
Report Date:
Lesson
More effort toward improving cooperation on regional public goods will strengthen the value addition of future regional projects. Cooperation between the two countries during implementation was limited. More inter-country activities toward strengthening cooperation on regional public goods such as early warning systems, flood and drought management control, joint missions to share country experiences, and knowledge sharing during project implementation would be useful in future regional cooperation projects.

Project Number: 40190-023
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project
Report Date: