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Lesson
Government’s effective and responsive implementation of the program and use of funds highlighted the importance of being able to adjust allocations as demanded by the crisis. The government successfully utilized its ADB countercyclical loan to support its relief and stimulus program under its two pandemic emergency decrees and funds (FY2020 and FY2021). In particular; the Cabinet responded rapidly to the successive waves of COVID-19; allocating and reallocating budgets to work plans and projects where they were most needed at any one time.

Project Number: 54177-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
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
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
A unified bill covering both water supply and sanitation services provides a practical approach to improving the revenue stream for wastewater management. Compared to water supply; it is often harder to collect tariffs for wastewater management services. The local water supply company in Medan; the capital city of the North Sumatra province; has provided a practical solution to this by installing a unified billing system for water supply and wastewater management services.

Project Number: 39071-013
Project Name: Metropolitan Sanitation Management and Health Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Incorporation into the project design of cost-sharing arrangements with irrigation water users broadens the scope for promoting project sustainability and improving related approaches and practices. In the Lao PDR, forming a water users’ group and assigning it the responsibility of collecting water charges is an important step toward project sustainability. However, this was not fully integrated into the project design and no relevant output Indicators were included in the design and monitoring framework.

Project Number: 40190-023
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Timely planning of project extensions and a more realistic extension period will improve loan utilization. Undisbursed amounts under this project resulted largely from new government policies as well as contextual and operational factors. Various activities were canceled because of government restrictions on the use of loan proceeds for soft components (e.g., training, workshops, etc). Non-disbursements were also associated with other policy modifications, such as restrictions on the recruitment of international consultants. But contextual and operational factors also played a role.

Project Number: 44265-013
Project Name: Second Health Care in the Central Highlands Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Including ADB financial management staff in project implementation teams will facilitate compliance to ADB financial reporting requirements. the first two annual audited project financial statements was delayed in the absence of complete information. ADB’s financial management staff should have been part of the project implementation team from the inception stage to review and monitor project financial performance and provide timely advice.

Project Number: 45084-002
Project Name: Coastal Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Engaging capable design institutes, backed by sufficient budget and time allocations, will result in better quality technical designs that in turn will facilitate construction progress, reduce the need for contract variations, and optimize construction costs. There were significant variations in some of this project's civil works contracts. These variations resulted mainly from poor quality of technical designs, with errors and omissions in the construction drawings.

Project Number: 45507-003
Project Name: Yunnan Chuxiong Urban Environment Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Reducing or avoiding implementation delays would require, among others: (i) ensuring that project and/or subproject implementation is a high priority for local governments and counterpart funds are provided in government annual budgets, and (ii) starting resettlement activities as early as possible and providing adequate funds for these activities.

Project Number: 45507-003
Project Name: Yunnan Chuxiong Urban Environment Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The financial health of key project agencies needs to be thoroughly assessed at project preparation to determine their viability and identify the proper risk mitigation measures. Although a financial management assessment was conducted for the implementing agency, the United Water Supply Company of Georgia Limited Liability Company (UWSCG) during project preparation, the assessment only pointed to a need for training in accounting and reporting, preparing business plans, determining tariffs and procurement.

Project Number: 43405-023
Project Name: Urban Services Improvement Investment Program - Tranche 1
Report Date:
Lesson
Instituting a dedicated project account can instill cash flow discipline and ensure the exclusive use of payments for the project thus avoiding cash flow problems that can hinder work progress. Contractors in road construction projects in India generally face cash flow issues while executing the project because the funds they receive are diverted from the project to other purposes. This disrupts progress.

Project Number: 49125-001
Project Name: Second Jharkhand State Road Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Project partnership agreements with government on human resources and funding are critical to effective implementation and sustainability. While initially the project national project implementation unit had issues on staffing, procurement, and implementation, these were resolved with incremental additional staffing, recruitment of a small core team of individual consultants, and restructuring to a subproject management unit. The non-recruitment of a social development specialist; to be funded by the government, affected the Gender action plan monitoring and planned survey update.

Project Number: 44130-022
Project Name: District Capitals Water Supply Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Sufficient funding must be ensured to cover all investment needs for rehabilitation and expansion of water supply infrastructure. This requires rigorous assessment of technical and institutional capacity (including for operation and maintenance or O&M) of the implementing agency and economic aspects (including life cycle costing) to determine whether to invest in a total new system at higher initial capital cost or to utilize parts of existing infrastructure to enable lower capital cost but likely higher levels of O&M costs.

Project Number: 44130-022
Project Name: District Capitals Water Supply Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Timely partial cancellation of unutilized loan funds should be undertaken to save on commitment charges. Disbursement projections at effectiveness were not met because of initial procurement delays. However, the projections revised during implementation were realistic, with over 90% of loan amount disbursed by project closure in 2017. When it was anticipated that entire loan funds may not be utilized even within extended loan period, the executing agency (EA) could have undertaken partial cancellation of loan funds. This would have allowed some savings in commitment charges.

Project Number: 38254-053
Project Name: North Karnataka Urban Sector Investment Program - Tranche 3
Report Date:
Lesson
Regular scrutiny of the financial statements by ADB, coupled with periodic training of finance and project accounts staff, will help expedite financial closure. The financial management arrangements of the recipient and executing agency were robust. Even then, financial closure of the grant account took 1.15 years from the grant closing date because of delays in the liquidation of advances and additional time needed to resolve the statement of expenditures review findings. Financial closing was further exacerbated by COVID-19 in-country lockdown measures.

Project Number: 44240-014
Project Name: Thimphu Road Improvement Project
Report Date: