Socioeconomic, institutional, and policy environment are important for project design. The failure of the project to achieve its intended impact, and limited achievement of expected outcomes shows that ADB needs to fully assess and understand all socioeconomic, institutional, and policy factors when it prepares and appraises projects. If these factors had been properly assessed in the case of the PDP, ADB could have lowered the outcome expectations. It could have adapted the design to match the capacity of the implementing agencies and stakeholders. With a full understanding of the difficult policy environment and entrenched obstacles, ADB could have imposed stricter policy requirements on the government and actually enforced these (and other loan covenants) as prior conditions for disbursements of the loans. One such policy requirement could have encouraged more investment in the RPCs by lengthening the lease period for the government-owned RPC estates’ lands. If these steps had been taken, the project might have been more successful.
Plantation Development Project