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Lesson
Construction timelines in climate-affected areas need to be reliably assessed to minimize completion delays. The construction timelines for Karamyk BCP, located at altitude of 2,300 meters above sea level, were tight. The contractor faced various issues due to the harsh weather, electricity supply interruptions, and delays with the supply of materials and equipment. Combined with the contractor’s relatively low financial capacity, this resulted in a 4-year construction period versus the originally planned 15-month implementation timeline.

Project Number: 46124-001
Project Name: Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Regional Improvement of Border Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Border crossing points (BCPs) will risk becoming stranded assets in the face of border disputes and other related issues. BCPs completed under the project have remained closed for traffic since April 2021 following a border dispute between the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. By May 2024, around 10% of the border line with total estimated length of 970 kilometers remained to be delimitated. The countries are determined to complete the process and sign a border agreement within 2024. Until the delimitation is completed, the potential traffic volumes across the borders will remain unknown.

Project Number: 46124-001
Project Name: Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Regional Improvement of Border Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Trade facilitation reforms and national single window (NSW) development are complex undertakings requiring much time to be completed. This project's timelines were very ambitious with regard to the NSW component given that it required institutional and regulatory reforms; business process reengineering across multiple government agencies; as well as design, development, and integration of the SWIS.

Project Number: 46124-001
Project Name: Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Regional Improvement of Border Services Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The assessment of benefits from new or renovated irrigation systems cannot be meaningfully compiled without detailed farm budgets (cropping patterns, yields, production costs, farm-gate prices).

Project Number: 45354-002
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
The selection of a single year as the baseline against which to measure the reduction in losses due to severe climate events is problematic. Since such events vary considerably from year to year, selecting a single year as the baseline can lead to distorted results. An alternative approach is to take the average of several years as the baseline. Another more meaningful alternative is to compare losses in areas protected by project works with similar neighboring areas without such works.

Project Number: 45354-002
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
A detailed assessment of water adequacy and the introduction of proper operation and maintenance measures and an adequate level of water charges are critical to successful outcome and long-term sustainability of irrigation projects.\

Project Number: 45354-002
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
Inadequate data collection can obstruct the documentation of project impact. The project implementation unit focused exclusively on disbursements to the detriment of other metrics in the design and monitoring framework. Government ministries do not collect data regarding TVET graduates, such as whether they are employed, in what capacity they are employed (i.e., whether they are employed in their field of study or not), and how much is their income. Information on historic and forecast budgets for TVET were not provided, nor were data on tuition collected from fee-paying students.

Project Number: 46535-001
Project Name: Strengthening Technical and Vocational Education and Training
Report Date:
Lesson
ADB project teams need to have a realistic understanding of how long it takes host governments to secure internal approvals to avoid delays in completion thatcould impact project performance. Loan effectiveness took place about 5 months after loan signing, some 3 months behind schedule, “due to prolonged government approvals and parliamentary ratification procedures.” This put the project behind schedule almost from the beginning. Subsequent review missions “emphasized the need to accelerate implementation of all planned activities.

Project Number: 46535-001
Project Name: Strengthening Technical and Vocational Education and Training
Report Date:
Lesson
Poor quality of local talent can significantly hinder implementation, causing ADB to intensify implementation support to put projects on track. The executing agency asked the international consulting firm “to change six of the national experts to enhance the quality of expertise.” Delays in retaining architects to monitor construction had a knock-on impact on the procurement of civil works and equipment packages. The objective of setting up the Project Administration Group (PAG), among other implementation units, was to delegate project execution to locals, but this did not work.

Project Number: 46535-001
Project Name: Strengthening Technical and Vocational Education and Training
Report Date:
Lesson
Less stringent selection criteria, which enables the participation of more eligible financial institutions, could optimize the impact of microlending short-term, low-interest loans in unbanked but regularly earning agricultural communities. The selection of partner participating financial institutions (PFIs) for the microlending component of this project may have been too strict. This resulted in the participation of only 3 of the 6 large PFIs in Tajikistan, all of which are foreign-owned and likely to have been effective partners.

Project Number: 45389-001, 45389-002, 45389-003, 45389-004
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
Timing and location are essential to the participation of women in gender-related and other project activities. Implementation of this project’s gender action plan (GAP) was challenged by the wide geographic dispersion of households, which created difficulties in gathering project participants for training. The gender awareness campaigns also coincided with the harvest season, which made it difficult for farmer-beneficiaries to take part.

Project Number: 45389-001, 45389-002, 45389-003, 45389-004
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
A thorough assessment of the financial management capacity of executing agencies (EAs) is required to mitigate the risk of financial issues disrupting project implementation or leading to non-compliance to loan covenants/grant agreements. The Agency for Land Reclamation and Irrigation (ALRI), the EA for 2 of this project’s 4 intended outputs, did not monitor the commercial bank that held the advance accounts for said outputs. When the bank became insolvent, part of the advance accounts was frozen, and was refunded only after government intervention albeit with significant delay.

Project Number: 45389-001, 45389-002, 45389-003, 45389-004
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
A project focusing on microfinance could help remove obstacles to micro-insurance or other risk transfer schemes in the agricultural sector. The project did not create a market for micro-insurance as envisaged.

Project Number: 45389-001, 45389-002, 45389-003, 45389-004
Project Name: Building Climate Resilience in the Pyanj River Basin
Report Date:
Lesson
A short repayment schedule can cause liquidity shortages for participating financial institutions and affect the ongoing disbursement of green finance loans. With monthly repayments on a 3-year loan and approved sub-loan terms of up to 5 years, a maturity mismatch can occur, which is what appears to have happened with Arvand.

Project Number: 45229-001
Project Name: Access to Green Finance Project: Project Completion Report
Report Date:
Lesson
Participating financial institutions (PFIs) achieve all the number and volume targets in terms of disbursing a credit line (as it is their core activity), but then fall short on achieving a strategic shift towards the project’s qualitative objective, which in this case was to build a strong relationship between the PFIs, the smart green energy solutions suppliers, and the borrowers for the provision and adoption of green finance, as well as making the PFIs’ loan officers semi-experts on smart green energy solutions products, technologies, quality standards and specifications, supplier asse

Project Number: 45229-001
Project Name: Access to Green Finance Project: Project Completion Report
Report Date: