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Lesson
Combating pandemics of COVID-19’s scale requires a whole-of-society-and-government approach. While replicating the Bhutanese experience may be difficult given the country's uniqueness in many ways, Bhutan's strong leadership and the government's relentless endeavor to implement public safety measures while vaccinating nearly the entire adult population is notable. Bhutan’s COVID-19 response with a whole-of-society-and-government approach under the leadership of the King is exemplary and provides a model for combating pandemics of such a scale.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Preparedness should be front and center of a disaster and/or pandemic response. The government set up a health emergency operations center and a WHO emergency operations center in 2018, and invested in medical camp kit tents, initially meant to be deployed for disaster relief. During the pandemic, the tents were repurposed to screen and treat patients with respiratory symptoms. In 2019, the country upgraded its Royal Centre for Disease Control laboratory, with equipment to not only handle new and deadly influenza viruses but also SARS-CoV-2.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Social relief and economic stimulus packages are key to alleviating the impacts of wide-scale disasters and/or pandemics. The government designed and implemented a comprehensive social relief and economic stimulus program on top of the public health measures, which were the main drivers behind Bhutan’s success against COVID-19. Every effort was made to minimize the financial hardship for needy households and small businesses as a result of the pandemic.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
A robust targeting and monitoring system is essential to prioritizing the poor and vulnerable in emergency assistance and disaster risk reduction. While the government’s National Resilience Fund monitoring system ensured that social relief reached the poor and the vulnerable and other affected groups as envisaged, the preparation of reports took almost 1 month on average. The COVID-19 experience indicates that pandemics affect women and women differently because of gender inequalities caused by socioeconomic conditions and societal gender norms, which put women and girls at a disadvantage.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Nonpartisan, broadly upheld leadership is crucial to the success of pandemic/crisis response programs. Leading the national efforts in the fight against the pandemic, His Majesty the King traveled extensively across the country to achieve the highest level of preparedness and to instill public confidence by alleviating the difficulties faced by the people and ensuring uninterrupted supply of food and essential commodities. His Majesty’s compassionate leadership resulted in building mutual trust and confidence among the people and their leaders.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Despite issues associated with the RETA’s design and relevance, ADB was able to maintain operations in two countries. The lesson here observed that the focus on tangible benefits was able to maintain some momentum.

Project Number: 45396-001
Project Name: South Asia Economic Integration Partnership
Report Date:
Lesson
This is a description of outputs and does not constitute a lesson. During the finalization of this validation, SARC provided another lesson: Partnership and working on related initiatives with donors and other ADB TAs promote leveraging of available financing to maximize results and enhance cross-learning.

Project Number: 45396-001
Project Name: South Asia Economic Integration Partnership
Report Date:
Lesson
The TCR did not have a lesson for this criterion. However, during the finalization of this validation, the South Asia Regional Cooperation and Operations Coordination Division (SARC) provided this lesson: Implementing regional TAs is more complex and entails continued commitment and engagement of participating countries. A comprehensive risk analysis and appropriate mitigating measures should be in place and regularly updated throughout implementation to efficiently address issues that may come up.

Project Number: 45396-001
Project Name: South Asia Economic Integration Partnership
Report Date:
Lesson
During the finalization of this validation, SARC provided another lesson: Flagship knowledge products on a sector involving multiple countries can contribute to more effective planning and programming of regional interventions.

Project Number: 45396-001
Project Name: South Asia Economic Integration Partnership
Report Date:
Lesson
Agreed. A useful lesson is the importance of partnering with other knowledge institutions to tap expertise and efficiently use financial resources.

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
Lesson
Another lesson relating to the TA is the selection of appropriate design and monitoring framework indicators that pertain to the effective utilization of knowledge products. Since the main outputs of regional capacity development TAs are knowledge products, monitoring the extent of utilization or uptake of the knowledge products produced within and/or outside ADB would benefit from user surveys or interviews. These surveys and interviews can help provide insights into how the knowledge products have benefited their users.

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
Lesson
Agreed. A useful lesson is the importance of partnerships with the client to ensure buy-in and follow through, and to tailor to additional capacity building demands from the DMCs

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
Lesson
There is a need for careful planning in the context of an exploratory TA, such as this one, to allow for timely delivery of outputs while ensuring process and cost efficiency

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
Lesson
In the TCR’s Conduct of Activities section, it mentioned: “The nowcasting study featuring Indonesia was completed and published in the ADB Economics Working Paper series in December 2015 and in Empirical Economics journal in June 2017. This tool has been used regularly by the Indonesia Resident Mission to support their growth forecasts since 2016 and has also been shared to the Fiscal Policy Agency of the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of National Development Planning of the Republic of Indonesia to enrich their suite of tools for conducting macroeconomic monitoring.

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
Lesson
Agreed. Another useful lesson is the importance of involving clients in a hands-on manner to build a technical product and ensure the transfer of technical expertise, and the subsequent adoption or uptake

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
CSV