Consultant’s reports describe activities by a consultant or group of consultants related to preparing a technical assistance project.
This document dated August 2010 is provided for the ADB project 41679-012 in Sri Lanka.
Consultant’s reports describe activities by a consultant or group of consultants related to preparing a technical assistance project.
This document dated August 2010 is provided for the ADB project 41679-012 in Sri Lanka.
Consultant’s reports describe activities by a consultant or group of consultants related to preparing a technical assistance project.
This document dated August 2010 is provided for the ADB project 41679-012 in Sri Lanka.
Consultant’s reports describe activities by a consultant or group of consultants related to preparing a technical assistance project.
This document dated August 2010 is provided for the ADB project 41679-012 in Sri Lanka.
Consultant’s reports describe activities by a consultant or group of consultants related to preparing a technical assistance project.
This document dated August 2010 is provided for the ADB project 41679-012 in Sri Lanka.
Consultant’s reports describe activities by a consultant or group of consultants related to preparing a technical assistance project.
This document dated August 2011 is provided for the ADB project 38426-012 in Nepal.
A district in Central Java has made itself a model of bureaucratic reform, employing training courses and e-government to vastly improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of public services.
Sragen, Solo - Sunarto sits on a row of benches in a government office, waiting for official authorization that will allow his sister to leave the hospital free of charge after surgery for breast cancer.
"It only takes 2 days," the 52-year-old teacher says. "I submitted the application yesterday and today I am here to collect the letter. It's all free; I didn't have to pay for anything."
The Integrated Poverty Reduction Services Unit opened in May 2012. Already it is providing daily assistance to up to 100 of Sragen District's poorest residents - typically those who earn less than Rp400,000 ($42) a month. Located in the local government offices, residents who meet the poverty criteria are entitled to 18 different types of assistance, ranging from free healthcare and scholarships to financial support for house repairs. Next to the entrance of the office is a poster that lists all 18 types of assistance. All take 3 days at most, and are free of charge.
"The poor need a lot of money for medical services when they are sick. In the past, getting a reference letter like this was very difficult."
- Sunarto, applicant for health care assistance
"The poor need a lot of money for medical services when they are sick," says Sunarto, who obtained healthcare assistance for his sister worth Rp15 million ($1,583). "In the past, getting a reference letter like this was very difficult."
Before the poverty reduction unit was set up, Sragen's poor - who make up almost 40% of the district's 900,000 residents - had to go to several different offices to obtain assistance. The faster, integrated system has been made possible by a database of socioeconomic profiles of Sragen's residents.
Subakir, a 42-year-old handyman sitting on a bench in front of Sunarto, says that when he tried to get dialysis assistance for his uncle in the past, he had to pull strings.
"Here, it's easier and faster, and the people are friendly," he said, clutching the reference letter that stated his 55-year-old uncle was eligible for medical services worth up to Rp10 million ($1,053).
"Sragen is among the most successful [project sites] because of strong ownership from the top all the way to the lower levels."
- Deeny Simanjuntak, ADB project officer
Sragen is an agricultural district about 30 kilometers from Solo, the capital of Central Java Province. It is one of 47 local governments in 10 provinces that have received assistance under ADB's Sustainable Capacity Building for Decentralization Project, which ran from 2002 to 2011.
The project, implemented following the decentralization of the Indonesian government in 2001, aims to equip local governments with the skills and tools needed to efficiently deliver public services and promote inclusive economic growth.
"Sragen is among the most successful [project sites] because of strong ownership from the top all the way to the lower levels," says Deeny Simanjuntak, the ADB project officer overseeing the implementation.
More than 1,200 of Sragen's civil servants received training under the project, including courses on information and communications technology systems, which were key to making the project so successful.
"There was high level of enthusiasm among the subdistrict heads for the IT training programs," says Nugroho, a consultant who served as the project manager. "Even if we only had space for 40 people, almost 100 would show up."
It wasn't always easy. With efficiencies come fewer opportunities for corruption, and Deeny says there was resistance from some civil servants who saw their ability to earn kickbacks reduced.
"Even when the system was already in place, some staff attempted to 'play around' with it," she says. "For example, the system enforced a first come, first serve arrangement for handling permit applications. That prompted some staff to attempt to move up their 'client' so that they could get extra money."
Sragen District head, Agus Fachturrachman, adds that part of the challenge was teaching civil servants that all residents, regardless of socioeconomic status, deserved to receive good public service.
In another part of the Sragen district government compound, a well organized center now serves as the one-stop shop for 74 different licenses and permits.
"When people want to obtain any kind of license ... it can all be done under one roof," says Joko Purwanto, the head of the provincial Development Planning Agency, which served as the local implementing agency for the project. "Applicants know how much it costs and when it will be ready. They can track the status of their applications through the internet."
Today, permits that used to take more than a month to obtain are issued in 12 days at most. Indonesia's national identity card, the KTP, is issued in as little as 2 minutes.
"Before, we had to go to several government offices to get a permit," says Jarot Sukisto, who was applying for a building permit. "Now we just need to fill out one form, submit it, and it will be ready within a few days."
Residents don't even have to go to the district capital. All 208 villages in Sragen's 20 subdistricts are now connected through an online e-government system.
It is possible, for example, to apply for renewal of a KTP from any government office at a village or subdistrict level. Office staff log onto the system to verify the data, and then issue the new card within minutes.
"We used to go to the district capital to renew our ID cards, but now we can just do it here in the subdistrict office," says Titi Sawaji, who is accompanying her mother to apply for a new KTP.
Sragen - recognized as a model by numerous awards, both from government and the private sector - receives visitors from other governments and NGOs wanting to study the district's system. Sragen representatives are also regularly invited to other districts to share what they have accomplished and learned.
Malinau district in East Kalimantan Province, for instance, has entered into a memorandum of agreement with Sragen to replicate their e-government system.
Deeny is confident that what has been accomplished in Sragen can be sustained.
"In Sragen, I saw some of the staff as champions, consistently aiming for reform, even though the leaders kept changing," she says.
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Decentralization has made sub-sovereign governments and public utilities increasingly responsible for providing urban infrastructure and services. To do so, they need to overcome constraints to mobilizing sub-sovereign finance through effective approaches and mechanisms that better support emerging fiscal structures and the magnitude of financing required.
Urban areas are increasingly becoming the key drivers of Asia's economic growth, with resultant gains in poverty reduction. However, the scale and rapidity of urbanization and mounting fiscal constraints to bridge existing and growing infrastructure service gaps is leading to major shortfalls in coverage, service levels, and quality of urban infrastructure - factors that are critical to (enhancing) the productivity of urban areas.
Estimates vary widely, but somewhere near $100 billion a year worth of new urban infrastructure will be needed to fill prior gaps and keep pace with this unprecedented urban growth. Total financing requirements for water supply, sanitation, solid waste management and slum upgrading in DMC urban areas was estimated at $25 billion per annum from 2006 to 2010 at 2003 prices. The figure goes up to $50 billion if urban roads are included and to $59 billion if mass transit is added. An estimated $32 billion will need to be added to this figure each year for maintenance of the physical urban infrastructure stock.
Current mechanisms for financing infrastructure rely heavily on the public sector to fill the gap between supply and demand. From this perspective, the government's fiscal position becomes the limiting factor in what can get built. Against this sits a smaller amount that the private sector will voluntarily finance under current mechanisms.
Sub-sovereign governments and infrastructure development entities in ADB's developing member countries are increasingly moving towards supplementing their reliance on the public sector with market-based sources of funding. But urban infrastructure continues to lag significantly in generating commercial investment interest, particularly due to lack of enabling structures for private participation and where scope for cost recovery is limited, leading to capital starvation of projects that could otherwise be financially viable in the long term. Private sector financiers continue to assess the risks of financing local government infrastructure, both actual and perceived, to be high. On the supply side, balance sheet constraints of banks and financial institutions allow lending that is characterized by short maturities and high interest rates - terms not very conducive for infrastructure projects. Debt through domestic capital markets has not been used on a significant scale by most countries. Borrowing through issue of bonds has, in most cases, been restricted to a few creditworthy entities.
There is growing recognition that (i) public-sector participation must be more effective in using its relatively scarce budget, and (ii) it must explore ways to attract significantly more private-sector financing to rise above the 20-30% share it currently holds. However, the most critical avenue for sustained financing of urban infrastructure will be domestic credit markets that will help access private domestic savings on a large scale to augment current efforts of governments and international funding agencies in financing infrastructure at the local and regional levels.
In designing local credit initiatives to reduce the private sector's perceived risks of financing urban infrastructure and to mobilize domestic resources through domestic capital markets, ADB's developing member countries have drawn on the experiences of the most developed markets. A number of countries have adopted innovative measures that are some combination of the municipal bonds model of North America and the municipal banks model of Western Europe with access to long-term savings deposits and government contributions.
These initiatives to help mobilize domestic commercial debt resources for sub-sovereign infrastructure finance include the creation of
The experience has been mixed and these initiatives have, at best, had limited impact and, at worst, crowded out private finance.
Local governments and entities can have both bank-based access to infrastructure finance targeted at smaller, less-frequent borrowers, and municipal bond market access for the more creditworthy, sizable issuers. The same municipal financing system and basic legal structure can support both markets as long as neither system is subsidized preferentially. A situation where there is competition between the two systems will not only lower the costs of borrowing for local governments but also increase the flow of information about credit quality. In the end, while differing in their approach to raising finance, the objective is to raise the cheapest possible funds, lengthen the maturity of borrowing, and improve the pricing factor.
Even as progress has been made in ADB's developing member countries to increase the presence of the private sector in urban infrastructure, investments have not matched needs. There are major gaps that can be reduced only through robust and persistent efforts to improve
It also requires better coordination among international agencies, and newer and improved modalities in their financing support for urban infrastructure in order to catalyze private sector finance in scale.
In sum, attracting funds requires great improvements in accountability by all participants. That accountability, and the greater trust it can engender, comes from better information flows and the freeing up of incentive mechanisms that lower costs and improve performance. As long as there are alternatives that the private sector perceives as having lower political and operating risk and as easy to arrange, then it will ration funds to infrastructure projects by raising the financial cost. Therefore, in order to improve local governments' effectiveness in their use of funds and to increase the amount of funds raised from markets, incentives (both positive and negative) need to be clear. If useful incentives are clear and distinct, they can motivate better use of resources and the search for better ways to serve the public interest. Likewise, a balance must be kept between the interests of infrastructure users and its ultimate providers, individual savers, and taxpayers.
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In this landlocked country of 3.4 million people, 42% of households with people with disabilities live in poverty, compared with 18% of households with persons without disabilities.
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Bengaluru, capital of the southern state of Karnataka, is India’s fourth most populous and economically productive city. It is also the world’s fourth largest technology cluster.
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In recent decades, Bangladesh has emerged as a leading textile exporter globally due to its low labor cost and high-quality products.
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For landlocked Nepal, roads are a critical lifeline that transport 90% of passengers and goods.
Validates the completion report's assessment of the project, which aimed to improve the operational capacity of 38-40 of Indonesia's regional governments. IED overall assessment: Less than successful
Validates the completion report's assessment of the project, which aimed to support the government's devolution policy in urban centers in the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan. IED overall assessment: Unsuccessful
