Greater Mekong Subregion

GMS Development Matrix

Background Features Development Matrix

The GMS Development Matrix (DM) is a compilation of subregional projects in the nine sectors of cooperation under the GMS Economic Cooperation Program. It is intended to:

1. provide unified source of basic information on GMS projects
2. help promote coordinated planning; and
3. serve as a tool for mobilizing resources.

The DM system is simple and user-friendly and allows easy viewing, printing, and exporting of basic information on GMS projects.

Background

The GMS Program takes a pragmatic approach to promoting regional development. It is an activity-based program that recognizes that each undertaking contributes and builds the momentum toward the attainment of the main goals and vision of regional cooperation. Since its inception in 1992, the Program has been achieving substantial progress in nine priority sectors of cooperation, namely, transport, energy, telecommunications, environment, agriculture, tourism, trade facilitation, investment, and human resource development.

The GMS Leaders at their First Summit (Phnom Penh, November 2002) endorsed a ten-year strategic framework that set five strategic thrusts for the Program, namely:

• Strengthen infrastructure linkages through a multi-sectoral approach
• Facilitate cross-border trade and investment
• Enhance private sector participation in development and improve its competitiveness
• Develop human resources and skill competencies, and
• Protect the environment and promote sustainable use of the subregion’s shared natural resources.

To flesh out the strategic framework, the Ministers called for preparation of a development matrix, which will contain the specific projects and initiatives that will contribute to the attainment of sustainable and equitable development in the subregion. Accordingly, GMS senior officials with the assistance of ADB have guided the preparation of such a matrix.

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Features

The new GMS DM is the result of a review of GMS projects and initiatives in the nine priority sectors, taking into account recent developments, such as the completion of some sector strategy studies and the results of important GMS events (e.g., the first and the second GMS Leaders’ Summits), and the outcome of the recent meetings of sector working groups and forums. The aim is to make the DM simpler and more useful.

The new GMS DM will be a comprehensive, simple, and easy-to-update database of basic information on completed, ongoing, and proposed subregional projects in the GMS. It is comprehensive because it tries to include all GMS projects, including those being promoted under other subregional cooperation schemes, e.g., the Ayeyawaddy-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS), and those that extend beyond the GMS borders, e.g., Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sector Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). This approach will make the DM more inclusive, and promote better complementarity between the GMS and other regional cooperation schemes involving GMS countries.

The new DM is simple as it will contain only basic information on projects, summarized in 12 fields/columns, namely:

1. the relevant sector (e.g., transport, energy)
2. an assigned code number
3. the project name
4. project description (e.g., its objectives, scope, location)
5. country/(ies) involved
6. estimated cost
7. committed financing
8. status (completed, ongoing, proposed)
9. the GMS flagship program under which it falls
10. implementation schedule
11. remarks (e.g., source of information, financiers and financing plan, recent updates), and
12. contact information (contact details of GMS agencies/ministries and/or development partners that can be contacted for more information about the project) (Please refer to Table 1 ). Where available, detailed project profiles are attached to the project names.

The new DM organizes the GMS projects basically according to sectors instead of by flagship program, although it still contains information regarding their classification according to the latter. Apart from the difficulties encountered in the previous approach (please see footnote 1), this approach is also more logical and makes for easier referencing since actual planning, programming, and monitoring work on GMS projects is done on a sectoral basis, e.g., in the GMS sector working groups.