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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13

Lesson
If gender-related goals are to be incorporated into policy conditions, there must be a high degree of commitment and genuine effort from the policy makers to achieve the objectives with a certain degree of confidence.

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
In countries with capacity challenges, reforms take time as limited capacity results in implementation delays. This must be accounted for in design.

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Where country systems are weak, program monitoring could benefit from TA (technical assistance), as in Tajikistan. The TA could focus on expenditure tracking mechanisms, internal controls, and external audits; and be conducted in two stages. In the first stage, when monitoring capacity is still weak, experts could be engaged to monitor program-supported expenditures rather than relying on the government to submit monitoring reports. The second stage would focus on improving country systems to help the transition of monitoring tasks from external experts to government staff.

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
In order to have a meaningful and more sustainable impact, policy reforms should focus on areas in which ADB has been engaged and remains involved over a longer time period.

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Gender-related goals are generally easier to monitor if they are policy conditions instead of targets in the DMF (design and monitoring framework).

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
A program concentrating on a single area is much more likely to have a bigger impact than a program with several focuses

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Policy reforms invariably require a champion to steer and lead. The Minister of Labor and Social Protection, who had earlier been the Chairman of Amonatbank, was the key figure in promoting the plastic cards pilot program. Despite some issues (some of which may still linger), this remains a modern step in pension reform in the region. Similarly, the reforms in the Tax Committee had considerable government ownership and support. During the program, the President announced issuance of a new Tax Code, an action that was endorsed by the program.

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
A multiple tranche design or program cluster design is useful, as it brings more balance to the program and helps keep up the government's commitment, even though such a design has high transaction costs for the government and ADB. Such designs also discourage the tendency for the government and ADB to include easier actions in the initial tranche and tougher ones in the later tranches, thereby unbalancing the program and leading to less than successful ratings. The incentive tranche kept ADB and the government engaged and kept the reforms on track.

Project Number: 44061-012
Project Name: Strengthening Public Resource Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
ADB has no modality for a financial crisis response operation for Asian Development Fund countries. The special program loan in the Program Lending Policy is limited to ordinary capital resources countries and can only used to address balance of payment crises. Likewise, emergency assistance under the Disaster and Emergency Assistance Policy (DEAP) does not include financial crisis response. As such, the program had to use the standard program grant modality and develop the design of program actions to allow quick processing and disbursement.

Project Number: 43098-012
Project Name: Crisis Recovery Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
The program provided lessons in allocating counterpart funds generated from program proceeds. Budget earmarking should only be considered if the government has adequate mechanisms to track expenditures. Otherwise, technical assistance is important to provide this capacity. Programs should also rethink strict budget earmarking. While placing strict conditions on how a government spends the funds seems desirable, implementation could be difficult when budget precision is low.

Project Number: 43098-012
Project Name: Crisis Recovery Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Since the crisis response operations support government's crisis mitigation measures, program monitoring could also benefit from technical assistance where country systems are weak, as in Tajikistan. The technical assistance could focus on expenditure tracking mechanisms, internal controls, and external audits; and be conducted in two stages. At the first stage, when monitoring capacity is still weak, experts could be engaged to monitor program-supported expenditures rather than relying on the government to submit monitoring reports.

Project Number: 43098-012
Project Name: Crisis Recovery Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Duccess of a financial crisis response operation is highly contingent on the government's ability to quickly put together its own anti-crisis plan, which could be financed by ADB after exercising due diligence. In the case of Tajikistan, the government had an anti-crisis action plan and a crisis budget. Readiness to implement is also important.

Project Number: 43098-012
Project Name: Crisis Recovery Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
During crisis episodes, while policy reforms are important, the government has urgent needs to quickly stabilize the economy, such as, providing urgent fiscal support to counteract the financial crisis. As such, crisis response operations should focus more on immediate responses to the financial crisis, such as maintaining critical social and safety net expenditures. However, as crises open opportunities for reforms, policy dialogue can be initiated for follow-up operations. But this should not delay the financial crisis recovery support.

Project Number: 43098-012
Project Name: Crisis Recovery Support Program
Report Date: