Support to Public Finance and Finance Sector Reform in Henan Province

Agriculture, natural resources and rural development / Agricultural policy, institutional and capacity development

Finance / Insurance and contractual savings

Public sector management / Public expenditure and fiscal management

Budgetary expenditure standards for selected development programs formulated

Agriculture insurance services for modern agriculture development prepared

Component 1: The draft interim report has been submitted by the consulting firm and is currently being reviewed by ADB and the executing and implementing agencies. The delays in implementation of this component have been caused by: (i) coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which has limited the availability of the executing and implementing agencies and hindered consultant work to the TA; (ii) consultant recruitment process longer than planned due to few expressions of interest received; and (iii) changes of key persons in the executing and implementing agencies and a long time for handover. The remaining activities include: (i) improvement of the report's clarity and readability; (ii) incorporation of comments suggested by the executing and implementing agencies, ADB, and copy editor; (iii) interim review workshop; and (iv) finalization, printing, and dissemination of the report.

Component 2: COVID-19 has also impacted the progress of the pending activities with delay of the conference and limited availability for the TA consultants to conduct field work. Additionally, COVID-19 has revealed major weaknesses, inequities, and system-wide risks in agricultural and food systems that should be addressed by this TA. This component has been reviewed to fully assess the COVID-19 implications and how the TA can be further strengthened to include such high-risk events and how agriculture insurance can be used to respond to such events. The TA has identified the following areas of work that are relevant to the scope of the TA and that would improve the TA outputs and make agricultural and food systems more resilient: (i) increase shock absorbance ability by expanding the scope from natural disasters to include other events and proposed insurance solutions; (ii) strengthen non-insurance risk management strategies; (iii) explore new approaches to mobilize private sector investment and de-risking by wrapping the investment with insurance, technology guarantees, warranties, commercial, and political risk insurance; and (iv) expand access to finance and microinsurance. Therefore, more time is needed to update the TA results to include these additional aspects to put forward a more comprehensive set of results to contribute to resilient agricultural and food systems.

Component 1 of the TA will require 53 person-months of consulting services (3 person months of international and 50 person-months of national inputs). An international budgeting and expenditure management specialist will be recruited as an individual consultant and a consulting firm will be recruited to provide national specialists. The consulting firm team will consist of seven national specialists with the program expenditure management specialist as the team leader; budget management specialist as deputy team leader; budgeting specialist on education development; budgeting specialist on health development; budgeting specialist on environment protection; budgeting specialist on industrial development; and budgeting specialist on science and technology. Resource persons may be recruited to review the consultants' outputs and share knowledge during workshops in accordance with ADB's guidelines on recruiting and administering resource persons.

Component 2 of the TA will require 27.5 person-months of consulting services (6.5 person months of international and 21 person-months of national inputs). International consultants will be recruited as individual consultants and a firm will be recruited to provide national specialists. The consulting firm team will consist of five national specialists with the agriculture specialist who will be the team leader; institutional and policy specialist; public financial management specialist; actuary; and insurance specialist. Resource persons may be recruited to review the consultants' outputs and share knowledge during workshops in accordance with ADB's guidelines on recruiting and administering resource persons.