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Lesson
Financial intermediation loans, which can be used to finance the investment plans of enterprises, need to be supported by TA to build the capacity of participating banks and enterprises to achieve the intended development results.

Project Number: 39229-022
Project Name: Agriculture and Rural Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Aligning the financing instruments with the development needs and capacity of institutions is another key factor for ensuring the quality of design of value chain projects. For this project, grant financing and technical assistance (TA) were used to support product quality, institutional framework, and deposit guarantee during the initial phase. These were followed by a package of loans and TA to support loans for onlending and capacity building during the expansion phase.

Project Number: 39229-022
Project Name: Agriculture and Rural Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
It is important for future projects to exhaust options to finance a certified institute to prepare IEEs. The project management office's initiative to use a project implementation consultant to prepare the IEEs for category B subprojects was a pragmatic solution to fulfill ESMS requirements and reduce the financial burden on subborrowers. Nonetheless, this approach may have contributed to the suboptimal quality of the IEEs and added to the consultant’s intended key roles, i.e., project oversight, training, monitoring, and reporting.

Project Number: 47046-002
Project Name: Gansu Featured Agriculture and Financial Services System Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Improved implementation of the ESMS would require complete documentation of the steps being followed and strengthening of linkages with other ADB safeguard measures. Implementation of the ESMS steps for impact assessment, consultation, monitoring, and reporting was less documented than the other steps for screening and categorization in the initial environmental examination (IEE) and safeguard monitoring reports. The COVID-19 health and safety plan was prepared during project implementation, but the ESMS template was not updated to include the plan.

Project Number: 47046-002
Project Name: Gansu Featured Agriculture and Financial Services System Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Balanced distribution of project benefits may require the provision of incentives for coverage of less attractive project areas. The beneficiaries of the project were highly concentrated in a few counties. Adequate incentives (e.g., bonus and honor) to the financial intermediaries and county project management offices to implement the project activities in all project counties would have ensured balanced the distribution of project benefits.

Project Number: 47046-002
Project Name: Gansu Featured Agriculture and Financial Services System Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Additional ADB support for safeguard implementation should be anticipated for future projects in which the executing and imoplagencies have no prior experience in ESMS. ADB environmental safeguard support was comprehensive for project preparation but less so for project implementation. This was due to a range of factors, which contributed to reduced guidance for the review of subproject safeguard categorization, draft safeguard documents, and support for the implementing agencies.

Project Number: 47046-002
Project Name: Gansu Featured Agriculture and Financial Services System Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
It would be best for ADB to review all subprojects classified as category B for the environment in all future financial intermediation loans. The ESMS criteria defining the number and types of subprojects to be reviewed by ADB resulted in the submission of only 11 sample subprojects and one IEE to ADB for review. The criteria were originally designed to balance the need for an adequate ADB review and guidance with the practical need to avoid reviewing a very large number of subprojects.

Project Number: 47046-002
Project Name: Gansu Featured Agriculture and Financial Services System Development Project
Report Date: