Description

Incessant storms and floods during June–October 2005 caused exceptional damage to rural infrastructure in several provinces of Viet Nam. In response to the Government’s request for emergency assistance, ADB carried out a damage and needs assessment in early 2006, and approved a loan of $50.97 million in November 2006 for the Emergency Rehabilitation of Calamity Damage Project. Two years later, the Board approved a supplementary loan in the amount of $25.5 million, in December 2008.

This evaluation information brief draws lessons and provides recommendations to improve the design and implementation of future emergency projects.

Summary Findings of the Study

This study assessed the performance of the project during the various phases of the project cycle against the success factors identified in the Special Evaluation Study on Project Performance and Project Cycle.

For seven of the success factors, namely, proper loan modality, adequate technical analysis, adequate and rigorous supervision by ADB during initial implementation, project start-up issues and delays, consultant recruitment and performance, risk mitigation for unforeseen institutional and political factors, and unforeseen technical factors, the performance of the project is rated unsatisfactory.

For three of the success factors, namely, appropriateness of project scope, capacity building and ownership measures, and ADB internal review process, the performance of the project is rated partly satisfactory.

For six of the success factors, namely, relevance and selection of original project proposal, appropriateness of social design, appropriateness of implementation arrangements, proper knowledge of ADB procedures in the executing agency and implementing agencies, contractor performance during implementation, and client ownership and competence, the performance of the project is rated satisfactory.

Overall, actions to date on the project are rated partly satisfactory.

Lessons

• Emergency assistance requests should be quickly assessed to establish if there is a real emergency and responded to promptly with appropriate small-scale help that will provide most urgent relief, and that can be dispensed with a minimum of procedural blocks and bureaucratic controls.
• Project preparatory work should be thoroughly done. It was questionable in the case of the project because of the unclear loan modality and other issues cited above. Many of the issues remained even up to the time of Board consideration. This raises an important question about the quality at entry of the project. Furthermore, advance procurement action was not permitted by the Government until funding for the project was assured (viz., loan effectiveness), yet advance procurement was included, possibly leading to unrealistic expectations concerning implementation.
• Change of guard involving key ADB staff responsible for project implementation, without ensuring immediate suitable replacement, is detrimental to effective project implementation (not providing immediate replacement of the mission leader who retired from ADB, was a major setback for initial implementation performance).

Recommendations

• For emergency projects, timeliness of the assistance is critical; hence streamlining and expediting ADB and government internal processes should be considered without compromising due diligence.
• ADB should use a calamity damage request by a developing member country as an opportunity to help them build a long-term approach to disaster management. ADB should separate emergency assistance into a relief component and a rehabilitation component. The relief component of emergency assistance should be provided quickly, with minimum design constraints, but the rehabilitation component should be formulated with medium- to long-term strategic objectives.
• Calamity disaster rehabilitation assistance should preferably be designed as sector-type loans, with complete flexibility in the choice of subprojects left to the Government as long as there is agreement on properly defined eligibility criteria and compliance with ADB regulations on procurement and safeguards. But the loan should include medium- to long-term strategic objectives. Such assistance should be followed up with efforts to build up long-term capacity and institutional structures to predict, prepare for, and manage calamities and disasters in an organized, cost-effective, and sustainable manner.
• Large-scale ADB assistance for disaster management should be focused on developing long-term capacity building to combat natural disasters. Besides building enduring defense and protection works, the assistance should also focus on long-range forecasting of storms and nationwide warning systems.