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Lesson
When the minimum amount of disbursement needs to be established for some administrative reasons from ADB's co-financiers, it is beneficial to set it at the lowest possible level to enable financiers to respond flexibly to the disbursement needs on the ground. The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) required the minimum amount of $5 million to process disbursements, except for the first disbursement of $300,000, while the ADB did not impose such a threshold.

Project Number: 41074-013
Project Name: West Kalimantan Power Grid Strengthening Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Without a comprehensive and robust design and monitoring framework (DMF) and without undertaking the necessary updates, the level of project achievements against targets cannot be ascertained. In this project, the scale and character of planned physical works in one scheme were substantially altered during implementation, but the impact of this change on project effectiveness cannot be properly captured by the indicators in the DMF. Similarly, without conducting baseline and impact assessments, the economic viability of project investments cannot be reliably established.

Project Number: 40190-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
Project costing at design stage should realiably estimate the costs of all civil and other engineering costs and provide allowance for foreign currency fluctuations. The actual cost of one irrigation scheme turned out some $10 million greater than estimated at approval. This resulted in significant revision to the subproject design. The revision also incorporated the appreciation in special drawing rights against the US dollar and the domestic and international inflation that pushed down the real value of project resources.

Project Number: 40190-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
Implementation is difficult if the capacities of consultants and executing agency staff fail to match the skill sets required for detailed design and construction of planned works. This issue contributed to the need for contract extension of the national consultants. The project also engaged three individual consultants (hydrologist, hydraulic specialist, and database specialist) to support the newly established Department of Hydrology and River Works and National Flood Forecasting Center.

Project Number: 40190-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
Effective gender mainstreaming in infrastructure projects may be helped by the inclusion of community-based activities that foster women's participation. In this case, community-based disaster risk management and flexible training schedules proved effective.

Project Number: 40190-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
Executing agency capacity to undertake large and complex irrigation projects can easily be overestimated, and relatively minor issues can delay both startup and/or effectiveness and implementation. In this case, overall implementation was made considerably more complex by the major civil works redesign which impacted procurement and safeguards requirements. Delays in recruiting consultants and getting the Ministry of Economy and Finance to agree to including price revisions in consultants' contract delayed loan effectiveness, in turn startup and implementation.

Project Number: 40190-013
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion Flood and Drought Risk Management and Mitigation Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
Review of the gender action plan (GAP) should be done within a year from loan effectiveness to facilitate the enhancement of both the GAP and project implementation. GAP implementation in Viet Nam was challenged by the late recruitment of a gender consultant, which prevented the EA/IA from receiving timely capacity-building inputs and limited the opportunity of the project to improve its gender equality design and targets.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Administration by a single team of future regional projects will enable better assessment of their regional impacts. The sector division in ADB headquarters delegated the administration of this project to respective resident missions after the midterm review in 2016. Country review missions were conducted separately after the delegation, causing discrepancies in loan financial management, safeguard compliance, and benefits and results monitoring. This led to difficulties in assessing the project's regional impacts.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Reduced counterpart funding and increased use of loan proceeds will facilitate timely implementation and project closure. This project was designed with substantial counterpart funding from governments. While demonstrating strong ownership, this affected implementation as the governments were unable to disburse the budget on time. Besides reducing the requirement for counterpart funding, sufficient documentation and incorporation of counterpart fund releases in the audited annual financial statements can help facilitate the financial closing of future projects.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Opportunities for knowledge exchange and sharing among resident mission staff need to be included in the design of regional projects. Regional cooperation and integration elements were not included in this project. As a result, resident mission staff missed the opportunity to share knowledge and exchange experiences that would have enhanced their capacities.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Establishment of professional project administration divisions and retention of experienced and trained government officials in these units can help mitigate the risk of project delays. Project implementation experienced substantial delays despite the preparation of time-bound action plans, project completion was still delayed by 60 months for Lao PDR and 48 months for Viet Nam. The recurrence of this experience in this project may be better addressed by putting in place professional project administration divisions, staffed by trained and experienced personnel.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Processing teams need to ensure that the scope and cost estimate of projects are realistic and reflect the actual contexts. Changes in the procurement plan and safeguards document necessitated by the revisions in project scope and costs caused startup delays. The Viet Nam component had a large amount of undisbursed budget because of overestimations in the cost of civil works and land acquisition and resettlement. Advance actions to engage critical consultants early enough should have helped mitigate the delays.

Project Number: 41444-013
Project Name: Second Northern Greater Mekong Subregion Transport Network Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The COVID-19 pandemic experience provided the government an opportunity to develop its approach to monitoring and reporting. During the loan period; ADB supported the executing agency in the quarterly monitoring of expenditures under the government’s emergency loans. This was appreciated by the government and because it provided the only English-language summary of government expenditure under the two emergency decrees, the quarterly monitoring was continued at government’s request even after loan closure.

Project Number: 54177-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Active Response and Expenditure Support Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Projections about the impact of road projects should be realistic and adequately consider the accessibility of the roads to be built to communities. The impact statement in the design and monitoring framework about increased access to markets, jobs, and social services in the 4 project provinces should have been restricted to the 10 districts along the project roads, as the project roads could not generate impacts in farther areas. Performance Indicators and targets should also consider data availability and baselines that proved to be limited in at least one of the project provinces.

Project Number: 43309-013
Project Name: Provincial Roads Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Projects at completion should ensure that there is clarity of mandates, responsibilities, and performance targets among institutions involved in the operation and maintenance (O&M) of project assets to minimize the risks to the sustainability of project benefits. The project supported the provincial government in clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the different government agencies and the private sector in O&M of the project sub-outputs.

Project Number: 43319-022
Project Name: Greater Mekong Subregion East-West Economic Corridor Towns Development Project
Report Date: