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Lesson
The project did not provide market-based salaries. Good staff was therefore hard to retain and turnover was high. This was a major reason for project failure. The overall cost implications of paying professional managers market-based salaries are marginal, especially when the substantial impact of weak capacities on project output and outcomes is considered, as this project demonstrated.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A poverty reduction, multisector area development project covering very large isolated areas cannot be efficiently implemented in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa without (i) the Planning and Development Department as the executing agency, which has the essential mandate and institutional capacity for multisector interventions; (ii) a decentralized project management model; (iii) components fully designed with dedicated staff resources, operational costs for implementing agencies, and market-based reasonable salaries and benefits; (iv) flexible, demand-driven design of interventions; (v) minimum benefici

Project Number: 29586-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Barani Area Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Avoidance of challenging issues. At both government levels (the government of Sindh and City District Government of Karachi or CDGK), there was a systematic avoidance of exposure to and tackling of various governance and institutional issues, as well as reforms required to examine and correct these challenges. Analysis of the few project subcomponents completed illustrates that the government of Sindh and CDGK only implemented easy studies that did not and could not tackle major disputes or issues that might require serious reforms in Karachi.

Project Number: 38405-013
Project Name: Mega City Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
There was a 3-year gap between the project preparatory technical assistance (PPTA) evaluations (in the last quarter of 1999) and the start (effectiveness) of the project (in the last quarter of 2002). Most structural and financial management plans, base maps, and priority subprojects therefore had to be reappraised at the start of the project, further delaying the project and straining limited capacity. To keep evaluations and project designs relevant, the time between project preparation and start up should not exceed 1 year.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The consultants under the loan were hired through quality- and cost-based selectio (QCBS). The staff remuneration in the bids was inadequate for good-quality staff. The level of effort and the skill set specified in the request for proposal (RFP) also did not match the complexity of the assignment. Similar issues encumbered the RFP for the nongovernment organizations (NGOs), allowing generally weak firms to submit bids that could not fully appreciate the tasks ahead.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Lessons from previous projects. Lessons from two older ADB urban sector loan projects to Karachi in 1986 and 1991, respectively, which were rated unsuccessful and partly successful, include the need for (i) greater attention to sustainability, (ii) enhanced project design based on sound assessments, (iii) careful consideration for institutional shortcomings of executing and implementing agencies, and (iv) greater efforts to address the financial insolvency problems of the Karachi local government bodies.

Project Number: 38405-013
Project Name: Mega City Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The project design was based on the assessment of seven sample TMAs and assumptions related to support for LGO 2001 from other sources to address capacity issues. The basis of the capacity assessment was seriously compromised during implementation. The project design did not have enough flexibility and depth to fill these capacity gaps, which would have required major changes in institutional arrangements and additional funding, a possibility that was avoided during implementation.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
A major reason for the delay in project start-up was the variance between the report and recomendations of the president (RRP) and the government's PC-1 planning document. Draft RRPs and PC-1s for a project should be shared between ADB and the borrower well before loan approval.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
To simplify the administration and financing of various subprojects, component-based financing is suggested for area-based rural development projects in which subcomponents will be financed by one financier only, together with government counterpart funding, instead of jointly by all financing sources.

Project Number: 29586-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Barani Area Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Weak government commitment. Given the political environment and the likelihood that a significant lack of consensus might be a daily reality on this project, the design should never have been so complex, with four different subcomponents, leading to a much larger MFF expectation. Perhaps a lesson here is that to achieve early and committed buy-in to required reforms and institutional shake-up, smaller and simpler components could be tested through a small scale or project preparatory TAs, which may lead to visible and larger MFF commitments.

Project Number: 38405-013
Project Name: Mega City Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The policy reforms agreed on at appraisal were overshadowed by the broader reform agenda introduced under local government ordinance (LGO) 2001 before project approval. Where major changes occur in the external environment of projects before ADB approval, it is more efficient to revise the project design up front rather than postpone the major adjustments.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The project schedule was unrealistic for a complex project that relied heavily on existing capacity and several up-front conditions before the subproject investments. The scheduling of complex sector and policy loan projects has to be improved and streamlined on the basis of actual implementation experience.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Feeder roads, large drinking water supply, and surface water diversion schemes cannot be classified under the umbrella of participatory small-scale infrastructure, as these schemes require specialized technical skills and high operation and maintenance costs. In the future, these should be classified as government-managed medium-scale infrastructure subprojects.

Project Number: 29586-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Barani Area Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Counterpart funding and incentive issues in TA loans. Despite the challenges in project implementation, the project support unit (PSU) and local support unit (LSU) had utilized close to $4 million in counterpart funding, while ADB disbursed only 15% of the TA loan. As a result, the actual split between ADB and the government was 15:85, when the agreement was 70:30. Thus, a key lesson is that there should have been far greater oversight on the utilization of counterpart funds, as the ADB-financed expenditures and activities and overall progress of the TA loan lagged far behind.

Project Number: 38405-013
Project Name: Mega City Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The project supported reforms only in the 24 participating tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs). The provincial government was expected to undertake reforms and address capacity gaps in all the other TMAs (52 in all). This arrangement seriously isolated the reform process. Sector loan projects should assess the political will, capacity, and incentives related to policy actions at all levels before building the support and incentives mechanism for reforms.

Project Number: 27182-013
Project Name: North-West Frontier Province Urban Development Sector Project
Report Date: