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Lesson
Better coordination or shared reporting and reliance on government’s own systems would ease the burden of monitoring and reporting the implementation of crisis response programs. Developing an effective reporting and monitoring system during a pandemic is difficult because of competing demands on staff time. This is accentuated when other development partners providing complementary support similarly impose reporting requirements.

Project Number: 54358-001
Project Name: Health Expenditure and Livelihoods Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Preparedness should be front and center of a disaster and/or pandemic response. The government set up a health emergency operations center and a WHO emergency operations center in 2018, and invested in medical camp kit tents, initially meant to be deployed for disaster relief. During the pandemic, the tents were repurposed to screen and treat patients with respiratory symptoms. In 2019, the country upgraded its Royal Centre for Disease Control laboratory, with equipment to not only handle new and deadly influenza viruses but also SARS-CoV-2.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Social relief and economic stimulus packages are key to alleviating the impacts of wide-scale disasters and/or pandemics. The government designed and implemented a comprehensive social relief and economic stimulus program on top of the public health measures, which were the main drivers behind Bhutan’s success against COVID-19. Every effort was made to minimize the financial hardship for needy households and small businesses as a result of the pandemic.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
A robust targeting and monitoring system is essential to prioritizing the poor and vulnerable in emergency assistance and disaster risk reduction. While the government’s National Resilience Fund monitoring system ensured that social relief reached the poor and the vulnerable and other affected groups as envisaged, the preparation of reports took almost 1 month on average. The COVID-19 experience indicates that pandemics affect women and women differently because of gender inequalities caused by socioeconomic conditions and societal gender norms, which put women and girls at a disadvantage.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Nonpartisan, broadly upheld leadership is crucial to the success of pandemic/crisis response programs. Leading the national efforts in the fight against the pandemic, His Majesty the King traveled extensively across the country to achieve the highest level of preparedness and to instill public confidence by alleviating the difficulties faced by the people and ensuring uninterrupted supply of food and essential commodities. His Majesty’s compassionate leadership resulted in building mutual trust and confidence among the people and their leaders.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Combating pandemics of COVID-19’s scale requires a whole-of-society-and-government approach. While replicating the Bhutanese experience may be difficult given the country's uniqueness in many ways, Bhutan's strong leadership and the government's relentless endeavor to implement public safety measures while vaccinating nearly the entire adult population is notable. Bhutan’s COVID-19 response with a whole-of-society-and-government approach under the leadership of the King is exemplary and provides a model for combating pandemics of such a scale.

Project Number: 54183-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Development partners are a great source of assistance in designing and implementing crisis response programs. The program design and implementation benefited greatly from the presence in Palau of the EconMAP team in situ in the Ministry of Finance (MOF), analyzing economic trends and providing regular advice, and the program team’s coordination with the International Monetary Fund and the Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Centre team in Fiji. Given thin capacity in MOF, such support has been invaluable.

Project Number: 54245-001
Project Name: Health Expenditure and Livelihoods Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Flexibility during implementation enhances program responsiveness. The government made timely adjustments to ensure complementarities between two major assistance programs at the time—the United States’ Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act 2020 that provided unemployment benefits to citizens of Palau and the country’s own Coronavirus Relief One-Stop Shop (CROSS) Act of 2020 that provide relief to the private sector. Funding from the CROSS components with lower uptake were reallocated to those with higher demand.

Project Number: 54245-001
Project Name: Health Expenditure and Livelihoods Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Coordinating or shared reporting and the use of government’s own systems would ease the burden of monitoring and reporting the implementation of crisis response programs. Developing a monitoring system that can be effectively implemented during a pandemic when there are competing demands on the time of staff, who are already stretched, is problematic. This is accentuated when other partners impose similar reporting requirements. Coordinated or shared reporting and reliance on government’s own internal systems would lessen this burden.

Project Number: 54245-001
Project Name: Health Expenditure and Livelihoods Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Changing internal guidance and expectations created additional pressure in designing ADB’s COVID-19 response programs and this has to be managed more effectively in future similar situations. At the time this program was prepared, ADB policy and guidelines on the COVID-19 pandemic response option (CPRO) were still being developed, and managing changing internal guidance and expectations added a significant amount of pressure.

Project Number: 54245-001
Project Name: Health Expenditure and Livelihoods Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
To ensure the success of expenditure management at subnational government level, these entities need to become more dependent on locally sourced revenues over time. Rapidly increasing central transfers can make them more dependent to the national government and weaken their motivation to raise local revenues.

Project Number: 50168-001, 50168-002, 50168-003
Project Name: Fiscal and Public Expenditure Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Decentralization and devolution to subnational governments need to be undertaken with caution, especially where capacity is known to be limited. A sequential program is useful, where functions and resources are better devolved first to local governments that are fully staffed and capacitated, and later to others, following a program that improves institutional capacity to accept the new responsibilities.

Project Number: 50168-001, 50168-002, 50168-003
Project Name: Fiscal and Public Expenditure Management Program
Report Date:
Lesson
The PCR noted delays with the receipt of cash assistance for livelihood activities, death compensation, and housing assistance. Delays were due to the requirement for beneficiaries to provide official documents that took time to verify. In future disaster responses, procedures should be simplified and could perhaps be managed by civil society organizations, and bureaucracy should be minimized.

Project Number: 52324-001
Project Name: Emergency Assistance for Recovery and
Rehabilitation from Recent Disasters
Report Date:
Lesson
Attention needs to be given to the health and comfort standards of the relocation housing in terms of indoor air circulation and lighting, among others.

Project Number: 52324-001
Project Name: Emergency Assistance for Recovery and
Rehabilitation from Recent Disasters
Report Date:
Lesson
Relocation housing sites should be accessible to the affected families. Location of new housing should be as close to the affected homes as possible.

Project Number: 52324-001
Project Name: Emergency Assistance for Recovery and
Rehabilitation from Recent Disasters
Report Date: