Search

Displaying 1 - 12 of 12

Lesson
Reforming large state-owned enterprises and complex regulatory reform. The impact of political sensitivities need to be factored into reform programs for major SOEs, particularly public utilities. Moreover, there may not be much legitimate appetite for foreign investment into distressed state-owned enterprises.

Project Number: 46385-001
Project Name: Strengthening Public Financial Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
A single, government-led policy matrix can enhance coordination and collaboration amongst development partners. The Joint Policy Reform Matrix has evolved into a highly consultative process around which development partners coordinate their budget support and technical assistance for reform. This process has helped the partners speak with one voice to the government and has created a situation in which line ministries actively compete to have reforms listed in the Joint Policy Reform Matrix.

Project Number: 46385-001
Project Name: Strengthening Public Financial Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Limited but meaningful policy actions. In a single-tranche operation, those reforms selected for development-partner support should be few in number but large in potential impact. Technical assistance support should be available at program commencement. They should be clearly defined, widely owned, and have time-bound milestones that trigger financial support, either by ADB or by other partners supporting the government-led reform effort.

Project Number: 46385-001
Project Name: Strengthening Public Financial Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Single-tranche program. A single-tranche program operation can encourage up-front delivery of important reforms, particularly if launched as part of a programmatic, multiyear, policy reform effort where ongoing reforms are supported by several partners. This ensures reform sustainability.

Project Number: 46385-001
Project Name: Strengthening Public Financial Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
All Pacific developing member countries, including Samoa, experience great difficulty implementing long-term structural adjustment policies. While demand-side, short-term price stabilization policies may be more readily implemented, longer-term changes to land tenure and state-owned enterprises and efforts to liberalize trade and investment regimes confront a very difficult political economy environment in the Pacific islands. Governments are comfortable with short-term price reforms that pose less of a challenge to the political economy.

Project Number: 43191-013, 43191-023
Project Name: Economic Recovery Support Program - Subprograms 1 and 2
Report Date:
Lesson
Most of the benefits associated with the reforms supported under the cluster program were conditional on the final reforms to be supported under a subprogram 3, which never eventuated. To the extent that this caused reform momentum to be lost or take a risky direction, this approach risked delaying (at a minimum) or wasting years of reform effort (TA, financial resources and government commitment).

Project Number: 41545-013, 41545-023
Project Name: Sindh Growth and Rural Revitalization Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Reform agendas chosen for program cluster support should be carefully selected during program design. Subprogram 1 had 25 policy conditions, while subprogram 2 had 38 policy conditions. The large number of implementing agencies and reform areas complicates program coordination. When reviewing the implementation of this cluster program, too often it seemed that quantity of policy actions was a substitute for the low number of consequent reforms that could be achieved within the indicative time-span.

Project Number: 41545-013, 41545-023
Project Name: Sindh Growth and Rural Revitalization Program
Report Date:
Lesson
The importance of reform momentum and of programmatic assistance for sustaining the momentum. However, the experience with some reforms in core policy areas 1 and 3 is a reminder that when sufficient political pressure is exerted, financial and technical capacity constraints can sometimes be overcome, even in the absence of programmatic support (as would have been provided through subprogram 3). This calls for greater effort during the design and implementation stages to assess the political and economic context, which can determine whether or not a reform effort will succeed.

Project Number: 41545-013, 41545-023
Project Name: Sindh Growth and Rural Revitalization Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Policy dialogue required on-the-ground support from ADB. Establishment of the ADB development coordination office in November 2011 played a key role in forging policy dialogue, although this was undertaken issue-by-issue (expenditure management, taxation, and state-owned enterprise reform) rather than through a holistic approach. Other development partners also provided substantial support for public sector reform in the Republic of Marshall Islands, but the coordinated dialogue with government that has been used successfully in programs elsewhere in the Pacific was missing.

Project Number: 43321-013, 43321-023
Project Name: Public Sector Program - Subprograms 1 and 2: Program Completion Report
Report Date:
Lesson
All Pacific developing member countries, including the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI), have great difficulty implementing policies to support long-term adjustments. The program included several line expenditure conditions under output 2 that the government struggled to implement and monitor (para. 16). In the end, the government decided to make across-the-board expenditure cuts rather than the targeted cuts proposed under the program. The condition targets were related to budget estimates rather than budget outturns.

Project Number: 43321-013, 43321-023
Project Name: Public Sector Program - Subprograms 1 and 2: Program Completion Report
Report Date:
Lesson
The program's DMF was overambitious (para. 8) and, based on ADB guidelines for DMF preparation could have been correctly recast to make the outcome the intended impact and output 1 the intended outcome. The outcome and impact statements and indicators and targets in a DMF need to be realistic and take into account the country context. [Main text, para. 38]

Project Number: 43321-013, 43321-023
Project Name: Public Sector Program - Subprograms 1 and 2: Program Completion Report
Report Date:
Lesson
The intended program outcome of achieving fiscal sustainability was overambitious, given the historically slow pace of reforms in the Republic of Marshall Islands and in other countries facing fragile situations. Moving forward with the reforms needed to fully deliver the program outputs required approval of three key pieces of enabling legislation, but the program design did not take into account the likelihood of a lengthy parliamentary approval process and underestimated the political opposition such reforms might encounter.

Project Number: 43321-013, 43321-023
Project Name: Public Sector Program - Subprograms 1 and 2: Program Completion Report
Report Date: