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Lesson
The appointment of TA country focals is critical for sustained coordination and to ensure that TA activities remain relevant and responsive to each of the countries' priorities and needs. But in this case, the nature of TA activities required the involvement of other government agencies in each country, such as the ministries of emergency situations, and in particular, the ministries of finance and the ministries of health. Increased engagement with RMs and national experts will be useful to ensure intersectoral coordination in subsequent TAs in this field.

Project Number: 53198-001
Project Name: Developing a Disaster Risk Transfer Facility in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Region
Report Date:
Lesson
Engaging an international firm with extensive experience proved to be the best option for this TA which focused on a complex and highly specialized topic. Nevertheless,there will always be an indispensable need for national perspectives and experiences, best provided by national consultants, to inform and be considered in TA analyses and recommendations. Future TA could benefit from increased engagement with local experts, either as individual consultants or as subcontracted members of international consulting firms or TA implementation teams.

Project Number: 53198-001
Project Name: Developing a Disaster Risk Transfer Facility in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Region
Report Date:
Lesson
Designation of an alternate TA team leader despite resource constraints is necesssary to ensure seamless project continuity and institutional knowledge transfer. It will also mitigate potential disruptions caused by staff turnover.

Project Number: 54344-001
Project Name: Supporting the Establishment of a CAREC Regional Infrastructure Projects Enabling Facility
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
Close collaboration among ADB’s regional departments that support subregional programs and broad participation these subregional programs and their member countries, (i.e. the Central Asia Regional Economic Corridor, the Greater Mekong Subregion program, and the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation program), and development partners are critical in successfully implementing ECD-focused TA. These have helped improve the content and focus of the ECD guidance note produced by the TA.helped improve the ECD guidance note.

Project Number: 54423-001
Project Name: A New Operational Economic Corridor Development Framework for Central Asia and Beyond
Report Date:
Lesson
The One ADB approach to project implementation is an exemplary cooperation modality in ADB. The Central and West Asia Department initiated the TA activities covering all ADB DMCs in the subregion and were strongly supported by the Regional Cooperation and Integration and Trade Division of then Climate Change and Sustainable Development Department and the regional cooperation and integration units of South Asia and Southeast Asia departments in providing inputs, mobilizing DMC participants, and generating financial support.

Project Number: 54423-001
Project Name: A New Operational Economic Corridor Development Framework for Central Asia and Beyond
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
Efforts to collect employment indicators for women during the preparatory stage could help explore possibilities of expanding employment opportunities for women in a project area. These indicators allow better insights on how to enhance their participation in transport projects. Moreover, women’s involvement during consultations and dialogues, especially during appraisal stage, helps improve project design.

Project Number: 46543-002
Project Name: Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Corridors 3 and 5 Enhancement Project
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
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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
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: