Asian Development Bank observed that the Bahawalpur Rural Development Project is rated as successful based on four out of five project components achieving physical targets.
However, the project would probably have been more effective in terms of impact had the targeting been improved and the process of delivering project interventions strengthened with respect to their contribution to poverty reduction. According to a project completion report of Bahawalpur Rural Development Project, the abandonment of the initial project area targeting as planned at design seems to have led to scattered, small interventions over a large area.
It is not known for certain how this scattering has affected the Project's impact, although it can be assumed that the impact has been spatially diluted and that the wide project coverage area stretched the capacity of the PMU.
While an efficiently managed grant-based program of free or partially free schemes can deliver rapid results to some communities, as was the case with the Project, the sustainability of such an approach is questionable in that it may increase the dependency of beneficiaries on external project funding. An externally funded intervention such as this Project is not a continuous substitute for longer-term government and private sector solutions for reducing poverty and enhancing rural development.
ADB report stated that the Agriculture and Rural development investments contribute to growth in rural areas, especially if a more focused rural development approach and agency implementation co-ordination is used to increase the links between the various project components.
It is also necessary to design and implement interventions that will ensure wider and longer-term benefits beyond the initial investment. This may include initiatives to increase agricultural productivity and improve links to private sector value chains, and reforms to improve the accountability of district governments.
Without coherently designed measures to complement rural infrastructure development-for example on-farm improvement, technology transfer, and marketing links-the impact of the infrastructure investment is limited. Furthermore, without such supporting initiatives there is more risk that better-off communities will benefit faster and more from rural infrastructure development, leaving poorer communities even further behind, ADB report mentioned.
ADB report observed that the achievement of physical targets should not be at the cost of community mobilisation, capacity development, and institutional building. Many community organisations visited by the PCR Mission had clearly only the aim of obtaining the project scheme and were not intended to continue or be sustainable. Given the participatory nature of this Project as designed, the process of targeting, scheme selection, and community organisation development should have been given more consideration during implementation.
Commenting over the "Project implementation", ADB report pointed out that while there is sometimes justification for externally funded projects to create new project management structures, this should be time-bound with a clear exit strategy, and not operate at the cost of strengthening government agencies. M&E functions should be independent of implementation functions;
ADB and the Executing Agency should carry out, at critical junctures, more rigorous economic, financial, and technical analysis of project. For Future Monitoring, ADB report said that one aspect of the Project that requires immediate attention is the maintenance of the rural roads constructed.
ADB report suggested that the Executing Agency monitor not only the budgetary allocation for maintenance but also that the maintenance is actually carried out by CWD and the district governments. The Executing Agency was in agreement with this recommendation.
The covenant on road maintenance should be complied with. Moreover, while most of the partially complied with covenants did not seem to have a significant adverse impact on the achievement of the project outcome, the partially complied with covenants on the selection criteria of subprojects limited the potential impact on poverty reduction. In the future, ADB needs to monitor compliance with such covenants closely during subproject selection. The following are initial recommendations for the design and implementation of future Projects, by ADB;
(i) Give adequate attention to institutional strengthening, and not only to physical targets, to ensure the poverty impact and sustainability of interventions;
(ii) Ensure that targets in the design and monitoring framework are well defined and when percentages are used for targets the baseline should be clearly defined;
(iii) Introduce an element of cost recovery in schemes;
(iv) Ensure adequate financial and technical resources are available to implement environment, social and resettlement safeguards, including proper documentation of the land acquisition or land donation process;
(v) Design project implementation arrangements that do not create institutions in isolation of government agencies;
(vi) Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of community organisations, the nature of their involvement and (cash or in-kind) financing of contributions, and their commitment to long-term community development;
(vii) Ensure separation of implementation and monitoring responsibilities within the PMU; and
(viii) Clarify and monitor process-related covenants.
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