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Lesson
As investment portfolio grows and as infrastructure projects increase in number, become larger, more complex, and diverse, it is important to improve the capacity of key institutions. Stronger managerial and technical capacities in areas, such as risk management, pricing, and treasury operations, are essential especially when an institution plays a nodal role in private sector financing in a growing infrastructure environment.

Project Number: 42180-016
Project Name: Third Public-Private Infrastructure Development Facility (Tranche 1)
Report Date:
Lesson
Projects that introduce new technologies require realistic timelines for design. Familiarization and adoption of new technologies, completion of trial runs, and commercial production take time, and this needs to be accounted in project design

Project Number: 45273-001
Project Name: Financing Brick Kiln Efficiency Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Well-developed, in-house expertise in appraising infrastructure subprojects, business development, risk management, and monitoring supported by good governance contributes significantly to effective implementation of an infrastructure financing facility. Over the years, IDCOL demonstrated this type of institutional capacity especially in power subprojects.

Project Number: 42180-013
Project Name: Second Public–Private Infrastructure Development Facility
Report Date:
Lesson
Consensus-building requires sufficient time for meaningful and in-depth consultations with various stakeholders. This program’s experience has demonstrated that building consensus between the government and the private sector, as well as among government departments, could take much longer than envisaged. The program design to strengthen the staffing of three major regulatory institutions within 2 years was optimistic, and a more realistic timeframe should have been considered. Future programs that will necessitate consensus-building should provide ample time for this type of activity.

Project Number: 45253-002
Project Name: Third Capital Market Development Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Improved readiness assessment is essential to avoiding implementation issues arising from inexperienced project technical and administrative staff and project managers. Under the project, the lack of experienced staff required capacity building during implementation that divided staff’s focus and resulted in problems in document processing until the project staff were able to fully understand work procedures and requirements.

Project Number: 39405-013
Project Name: Dhaka Water Supply Sector
Development Program
Report Date:
Lesson
This is an appropriate point, but this lesson could have been better phrased as follows: An active partnership with the government is necessary to reduce delays in project commencement and to ensure full commitment and timely allocation of counterpart resources.

Project Number: 48139-001
Project Name: Enhancing the Institutional Capacity of the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division
Report Date:
Lesson
This lesson suggests that the TA project may not have focused enough on the actual needs of the staff, and they could have done a better job at identifying gaps in skills and meeting these through partnerships.

Project Number: 45376-001
Project Name: Capacity Building for Portfolio Management
Report Date:
Lesson
The TCR did not have a lesson for this criterion. However, during the finalization of this validation, the South Asia Regional Cooperation and Operations Coordination Division (SARC) provided this lesson: Implementing regional TAs is more complex and entails continued commitment and engagement of participating countries. A comprehensive risk analysis and appropriate mitigating measures should be in place and regularly updated throughout implementation to efficiently address issues that may come up.

Project Number: 45396-001
Project Name: South Asia Economic Integration Partnership
Report Date:
Lesson
Another lesson relating to the TA is the selection of appropriate design and monitoring framework indicators that pertain to the effective utilization of knowledge products. Since the main outputs of regional capacity development TAs are knowledge products, monitoring the extent of utilization or uptake of the knowledge products produced within and/or outside ADB would benefit from user surveys or interviews. These surveys and interviews can help provide insights into how the knowledge products have benefited their users.

Project Number: 47146-001
Project Name: Macroeconomic Modelling for Improved Economic Assessment
Report Date:
Lesson
The political economy is a key consideration and can result in significant delays especially if counterpart capacity is low.

Project Number: 48206-001
Project Name: Promoting Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (Phase 2)
Report Date:
Lesson
To avoid risk of failure, an umbrella TA should balance out the risk in the portfolio between highly innovative yet risky activities and those with firm disbursement schedules.

Project Number: 48206-001
Project Name: Promoting Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (Phase 2)
Report Date:
Lesson
Flexible umbrella TA projects allow for the projects to be opportunistic and take on new initiatives, but there could be implementation challenges and time delays. This also means that not all results may be known at TA project completion. For instance, the subproject on future cities was included through additional TASF resources, but this also required extension and the procurement of additional consultancy services. Although work progressed in the three pilot cities, it is not clear whether this was taken up by the respective governments by the end of the TA project.

Project Number: 48206-001
Project Name: Promoting Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (Phase 2)
Report Date:
Lesson
Sequencing of activities can help to progress implementation. For example, early capacity development and analytical work can help to speed up disbursement, while use of knowledge and evidence comes at a later stage in implementation.

Project Number: 48206-001
Project Name: Promoting Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (Phase 2)
Report Date:
Lesson
Agreed. It is the validation’s view that the delay in government approval due to government processes should have been duly considered with a proper assessment of current capacity. Such an assessment is important in reviewing project risks and incorporating risk mitigating strategies. In this case, the timeframe for the project appears to have been underestimated. Political unrest was not identified as a risk upfront but accounted for significant interruptions to the project implementation.

Project Number: 45078-001
Project Name: Strategic Masterplan for Chittagong Port
Report Date:
Lesson
Additionally, this validation notes that feasible technical solutions that support national needs are critical to getting buy-in and ownership. For instance, some of the final reports for Bangladesh and Bhutan were produced in collaboration with national partners. It is missing from the TCR a description of the issues that led to including the DMF’s third outcome indicator in the DMF, or to managing lessons arising from a substantial increase in budget mid-way through implementation.

Project Number: 46470-001
Project Name: Action on Climate Change in South Asia
Report Date: