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Lesson
Governments and ADB should conduct a more detailed review of the studies to confirm soundness of assumptions and results. The pre-feasibility study that prepared the project design and appraised the viability of the subprojects had quality issues, given that two airport projects in Cambodia were cancelled due to poor market viability, the airport project in the Lao PDR had to be redesigned due to the need to expand scope, the site for the wastewater treatment plant in Siem Reap was not firmed up and substantial time was wasted looking for an alternative site, and others.

Project Number: 35282-013, 33434-013, 35345-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion: Mekong Tourism Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Project targets aimed at including vulnerable groups (women and ethnic groups) should be based on a thorough understanding of realities and local institutional capacity. In the project's gender action plan, the goal of reducing rice deficits was to be achieved by having women constitute 50% of farmers. Since rural women by tradition are fully active in farming, the 50% target was irrelevant. Moreover, there is no logical link between rice deficits and the number of female farmers.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Almost all communities are experienced in managing their irrigation schemes and cultivating irrigated rice, but there remains a need for ongoing technical support and extension outreach after the schemes have been upgraded and turned over. There should be routine monitoring and support to the water user associations (WUAs). Without such support, the community-managed irrigation (CMI) systems will be slow to achieve their full economic potential, even though the investments may be economically viable as they stand.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A comparison of the project and the Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project (CMISP) experiences shows that effective control of construction costs through careful subproject selection, design, and construction supervision is essential to ensure that economic benefits are achievable. The project managers effectively absorbed the lesson of the CMISP, where high construction costs for many subprojects contributed to an ex-post EIRR that was well below the appraisal estimate.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Agricultural extension activities usually consume a relatively small share of the total budget in irrigation projects, and therefore may get less attention from irrigation departments, which tend to focus on irrigation construction. The project experience shows that agricultural extension has a high pay-off where it is relevant to farmer needs, well supported by extension staff, and done over enough time to allow farmers to observe and digest the results.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Because farm activities are highly seasonal, timely start-up of implementation is crucial in agriculture projects. This experience shows that the 6-month delay in mobilizing consultants contributed to the loss of a year of crop demonstration trials in the Year 3 subprojects.

Project Number: 34188-013
Project Name: Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A demand-driven community approach facilitates better implementation. The village area improvement experience highlights the importance of proactive communities during the design, implementation, and maintenance of projects. The use of similar principles may be replicated or expanded for a larger set of beneficiaries. An important lesson from the village area improvement program is its use of a demand-driven approach to development instead of the top-down, supply-driven activities of the past.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A balanced approach to urban land use ensures success. A “bottom-up” approach to urban land use could help avoid a potential overload of infrastructure and service networks due to overcrowding, pollution, increased poverty, and environmental degradation. Building on the success of the village area improvement initiative, in particular (but also community participation initiatives in earlier ADB-supported urban projects), support for community planning could complement and support higher level urban and regional plans.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Difficult decentralization reforms will benefit from a systematic sector-wide approach to change. While building toward common reform agenda goals, several ADB initiatives toward decentralized urban governance were not adequately linked. This long process would have benefited from a comprehensive reform framework based on institutional, political, and economic imperatives and a clear sector road map.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Implementing urban institutional reform is complex. Careful attention must be paid to the following aspects of urban institutional reform: (i) its acceptance by all key stakeholders through a participatory process; (ii) a thorough understanding of local politics; (iii) realistic phasing, sequencing, and timing of its institutional and policy reform; and (iv) an appropriate balance between allocated resources and expectations of the stakeholders involved. A more open-ended policy dialogue may yet prove more helpful than the application of loan covenants.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Clear horizontal and vertical roles for urban sector agencies are important under a multisector approach. A multisector approach in the urban sector is readily implementable in the Lao PDR, because, for the most part, subsectors are within the mandate of the ministry responsible for urban development and its provincial branches. The approach can be enhanced further with the inclusion of urban transport in urban projects. This would not be difficult, given the mandate of MPWT/DPWT.

Project Number: 33432-013
Project Name: Vientiane Urban Infrastructure and Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Given the limited time and resources under the project, capacity building for urban development administration authorities (UDAAs) focused on construction management and supervision, operation and maintenance (O&M) of infrastructure and of sanitary landfills, and exchange of lessons among UDAAs. Various workshops were organized on these topics for managerial staff, accountants, and engineers of UDAAs. By strengthening core capacities, the project created momentum for continued support of long-term capacity building to enable UDAAs to provide quality public services.

Project Number: 31352-013
Project Name: Small Towns Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The community's involvement in various project activities and its interactions with the government and project staff greatly enhanced the sense of ownership. Community participation and contribution was the key to successfully completing the village upgrading subcomponent. This was evidenced by the fact that the actual community contribution of $206,000, mainly in cash, exceeded the estimated amount of $200,000 expected at appraisal to be mainly as labor.

Project Number: 31352-013
Project Name: Small Towns Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The decentralized approach introduced during implementation contributed to strengthening the capacity of PIUs and speeded up project progress. PIUs demonstrated their abilities in implementing, supervising, and monitoring physical activities, as well as in managing civil works contracts. As a result, the project implementation was expedited at around midterm and caught up to schedule despite the delays in early stages of project implementation.

Project Number: 31352-013
Project Name: Small Towns Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The project's geographical coverage posed a major challenge to monitor subproject implementation in 12 project towns located all over the country from the northern tip (Phongsali) to the south (Samakkhixai). Particularly during rainy season, it was time-consuming for project coordination unit (PCU) staff and consultants to travel to the project towns, as well as for personnel from UDAAs and project implementation units (PIUs) to attend meetings and workshops.

Project Number: 31352-013
Project Name: Small Towns Development Sector Project
Report Date: