All Pacific developing member countries, including Samoa, experience great difficulty implementing long-term structural adjustment policies. While demand-side, short-term price stabilization policies may be more readily implemented, longer-term changes to land tenure and state-owned enterprises and efforts to liberalize trade and investment regimes confront a very difficult political economy environment in the Pacific islands. Governments are comfortable with short-term price reforms that pose less of a challenge to the political economy. Reform programs that include structural adjustment policy require careful, if not tough, negotiation. This negotiation requires the buy-in of government, support of all major development partners, and support of senior ADB management. Consideration should have been given in program design to greater consultation between the government and ADB project analysts for improved program management and policy analysis, impact assessment, redesign where appropriate (for example, in the transition stage between subprograms 1 and 2), and implementation.
Economic Recovery Support Program - Subprograms 1 and 2