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Lesson
Technical assistance with a narrow focus, immediate policy relevance, and carried out with national champions with financial and/or planning authority was key to the successful integration of climate technologies in country investment plans. Careful and realistic planning is required for the production and dissemination of outputs, since this involves multiple institutions within a given timeframe.

Project Number: No PN
Project Name: Climate Change Fund, 2008–2019
Report Date:
Lesson
Institutional capacity development on climate change in ADB’s DMCs requires long-term engagement. Just over half of CCF resources went toward capacity development. The lack of basic climate data, technical expertise, and qualified local staff in many DMCs means that some processes, especially baseline studies, vulnerability assessments, and cost–benefit analysis of mitigation and adaptation measures, have to be adjusted to reflect realities on the ground.

Project Number: No PN
Project Name: Climate Change Fund, 2008–2019
Report Date:
Lesson
The strategic oversight of funds is enhanced when their governance structure includes some form of third-party engagement. The original Board paper outlined the governance structure of CCF and included at its apex ADB and external financing partners, whose function would be to provide strategic direction to the CCF and to meet ADB for annual consultations and to review progress, administration, and the annual work program. Since there are no external financing partners, ADB sits alone at the apex of the governance structure.

Project Number: No PN
Project Name: Climate Change Fund, 2008–2019
Report Date:
Lesson
Active engagement of national stakeholders and ADB resident missions from the outset helps improve ownership and project success. The likelihood of success is greater when an RCIF TA project is designed with genuine consultation with concerned line ministries, national agencies, the private sector (if relevant), and ADB resident missions. Active engagement of in-country stakeholders helps ADB to identify binding constraints and solutions, and to internalize implementation challenges at the TA design stage. This makes clear the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder.

Project Number: No PN
Project Name: Regional Cooperation and Integration Fund, 2007–2019
Report Date:
Lesson
Clear delineation of country activities with transparent funding allocations in cross-border RCI TA projects involving several countries helps smooth implementation and increase project success. The transaction costs in cross-border RCI TA projects tend to be high both in terms of resources and the time required to achieve agreement among stakeholders in the participating countries. It takes much longer to negotiate and agree to a common proposal in a cross-border RCI TA project than in a usual TA project.

Project Number: No PN
Project Name: Regional Cooperation and Integration Fund, 2007–2019
Report Date:
Lesson
A mechanism is needed to coordinate activities across project or technical assistance components. The absence of an explicit mechanism to coordinate activities across TA components and parts constrained the project implementation. A complex project with overlapping responsibilities across components, such as the project, needs an effective coordination mechanism.

Project Number: 32437-013
Project Name: Restructuring of Specialized Financial Institutions
Report Date:
Lesson
Baseline and quantitative performance indicators are required in the technical assistance framework. The lack of baseline and quantitative performance indicators affected the measurement of results and management of the project. It is imperative for a project appraisal team to identify suitable indicators during appraisal.

Project Number: 32437-013
Project Name: Restructuring of Specialized Financial Institutions
Report Date:
Lesson
The scope of financial and portfolio audit must be agreed at appraisal. Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives’ post-project achievements underscore the importance of financial and portfolio audits as the basis for restructuring and operational planning. The scope of such important yet sensitive undertakings should be discussed in detail with the concerned agencies during appraisal.

Project Number: 32437-013
Project Name: Restructuring of Specialized Financial Institutions
Report Date:
Lesson
A thorough information gap analysis is needed at entry. The project appraisal team expected the project consultants to identify information and analytical gaps, and the specific needs of beneficiary institutions at the inception stage of TA implementation. Such a preparatory study should have been undertaken during the processing and appraisal stages.

Project Number: 32437-013
Project Name: Restructuring of Specialized Financial Institutions
Report Date:
Lesson
Better information and knowledge management is needed within ADB. This evaluation was constrained by the limited availability of consultant reports. An effective information and knowledge management system should be in place to ensure that TA outputs are properly stored within ADB, and can be easily retrieved.

Project Number: 32437-013
Project Name: Restructuring of Specialized Financial Institutions
Report Date:
Lesson
Terms of reference must be adjusted in case of change in policy direction. The change in policy direction under the renewed political leadership resulted in some adjustments of priorities on the activities and outputs under the project. However, the terms of reference of the concerned TA grant (component 1) were not adjusted accordingly. By formally adjusting the terms of reference, the consulting team may have caught up in a better manner with the clients’ changing needs, and perhaps clarified some of the issues causing the subsequent pretermination.

Project Number: 32437-013
Project Name: Restructuring of Specialized Financial Institutions
Report Date:
Lesson
The key problems and constraints of SME access to credit in Bhutan needed to be better understood. Problems included high interest rates, short loan amortization periods, and excessive collateral requirements. The FSIF loan had no effect on these.

Project Number: 29243/29243-01/31911
Project Name: Financial Sector Intermediation Facility and Equity Investment in Bhutan National Bank
Report Date:
Lesson
The failure of interest rate liberalization was also partly a failure of analysis. Removing overt administrative control of interest rates may make little difference to prevailing rates and practices if there is little competition between lenders because of the sector’s oligopolistic and closely held structure. Several factors made it unlikely that simple deregulation of rate setting would be conclusive.

Project Number: 29243/29243-01/31910
Project Name: Financial Sector Intermediation Facility and Equity Investment in Bhutan National Bank
Report Date:
Lesson
Delays in the establishment of a credit information bureau was also partly a failure of analysis. Costs were underestimated and the problems were not fully understood. Founding a CIB in Bhutan is not only a problem of coordination among the lending institutions. The challenge is more fundamental, with the essential problem being the poor data systems and practices of the lending institutions. Substantive analysis at the design stage of the FSIF would probably have identified this issue and allowed ADB and RGoB to address it earlier.

Project Number: 29243/29243-01/31909
Project Name: Financial Sector Intermediation Facility and Equity Investment in Bhutan National Bank
Report Date:
Lesson
Insufficient analytical underpinnings led to formal rather than substantive compliance with tranche release conditions. Joint undertakings with other donors and RGoB might have strengthened the substantive analysis of policies and the robustness of the dialogue with RGoB. 60 For example, requiring that RGoB formulate an FDI policy, without engaging substantively on the substance of that policy, was not useful. A policy was written and adopted, but a new attempt was being made to formulate a workable policy in 2009.

Project Number: 29243/29243-01/31908
Project Name: Financial Sector Intermediation Facility and Equity Investment in Bhutan National Bank
Report Date: