Sri Lanka: Conflict Affected Emergency Project

Horizontal Tabs

Lessons

Decentralization improves local community and institutional ownership.

Sub-outputs in road rehabilitation, restoration of water supply schemes, and rehabilitation of irrigation schemes were devolved to provincial agencies. In each province, district coordinating committees identified local and provincial roads, and tank irrigation schemes for intervention. Provincial coordination committees reviewed and approved the proposed projects. The decentralized set-up provided some demand-driven flexibility, enabling implementing agencies to adjust activities to respond to evolving post-conflict needs. Full participation by farmers’ organizations in irrigation activities created a high sense of community ownership. The strong community and institutional ownership fostered by the project was among the key reasons why it surpassed most of its output and outcome targets.

Engaging many local contractors in post-conflict rehabilitation rebuilds local capacities but can also lead to implementation delays.

As encouraged by the Report and Recommendation of the President, implementing agencies engaged many local contractors. However, in the conflict’s aftermath, most of these entities were under-resourced in staff, equipment, and finances. With the influx of development projects in post-conflict rehabilitation, many large ones also committed to other works. Some contract packages thus had to be split to accommodate smaller contractors and farmers’ organizations were engaged for some small irrigation and farm access road works. Overall, local contractors performed satisfactorily, although most were late in completing contracts thereby contributing to project implementation delays. Common causes of delays were the contractors’ poor financial skills and the heavy accounting load placed on implementing agencies (IAs), which postponed approvals and, consequently, slowed payments to contractors. However, some causes of delays, for instance, changes in the sub-output designs and shortages in labor and material, were outside the contractors’ control.

ADB’s procurement and disbursement procedures are too complex for small entities.

Timely guidance provided by ADB on technical and financial issues facilitated decision-making and monitoring and was welcomed by the executing agency (EA) and IAs. The EA and IAs found ADB’s advice on budget reallocations, contingencies’ release, and extension approvals most helpful. However, they viewed ADB’s procedures for bidding and engaging contractors and suppliers too complex, especially for the many small contractors involved. ADB’s fielding of a staff consultant to assist in project-wide monitoring and reporting and delegation of authority to the EA for processing small contractors’ payments through an imprest advance helped speed up disbursements and payment of accounts below $100,000. Trainings on ADB procurement and disbursements and the preparation of borrowers’ completion reports also helped address project administration difficulties.

Background

For nearly 3 decades, Sri Lanka had been severely affected by an internal armed conflict. The entire country suffered but the Northern Province bore the brunt of the conflict. The conflict intensified from February 2007 and government forces gained full control in May 2009. The conflict had a devastating impact on the northern region where much of the infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed, access to basic social services had been disrupted, and the livelihood of the population was severely affected.

To help meet urgent post-conflict rehabilitation and construction priorities, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $150 million loan for the Conflict-Affected Region Emergency Project (CAREP) in April 2010. The CAREP was an emergency assistance project, designed to complement ADB ongoing projects, the activities of many other agencies, and the strategic framework formulated by a presidential task force for revitalizing the region, restoring livelihoods, and reducing poverty.

CAREP’s envisaged impact was to reduce poverty in the conflict-affected areas. Its intended outcome was to restore and improve livelihood, economic infrastructure, and administrative and legal services in the Northern and Eastern provinces and adjoining areas of the North Central Province. It had 4 planned outputs: (i) reestablished connectivity through road rehabilitation, (ii) restored power and water utilities, (iii) rehabilitation or reconstruction of irrigation and local administration infrastructure; and (iv) reconstructed court facilities.

At completion, the project: (i) built or upgraded 385 kilometers (km) of roads compared to a 370 km-target; (ii) contributed 500,603 vehicle-km road use compared to a 480,580 vehicle-km-target; (iii) improved 19,916 hectares of land through irrigation compared to a 6,500 hectare-target; (iv) installed 67.2 km of transmission lines; and (v) provided 33,000 households with improved water supplies. 24 administrative offices and buildings were constructed or improved; 3 judicial centers were completed and equipped. Beneficiaries significantly comprised of resettled internally displaced people.

Delivery of the outputs, mostly exceeding targets, allowed the project to overachieve most of its outcome targets, specifically with regards to reducing travel time, increasing access to power supply, and restoring irrigated cultivation. As of 2016, there was a slight shortfall in the number of people benefitting from restored drinking water supplies, but this was to be offset by still ongoing headworks. Other missed targets were due to changes in scope requested by the government to adapt to the evolving post-conflict needs.

Self-evaluation by ADB’s South Asia Department rated the project successful. Delays were minimal, and the planned results were achieved largely within budget. Estimated project cost at appraisal was $168.24 million, but the total actual cost was $152.05 million. During implementation, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies joined as cofinancer, providing $1.5 million. ADB loan disbursements totaled $138.17 million.

Three ministries successively served as executing agency ─ the Ministry of Nation-Building and Estate Infrastructure Development, until May 2010; the Ministry of Economic Development, until January 2015; and the Ministry of National Policies and Economic Affairs after the presidential election in January 2015. Several central government agencies acted as implementing agencies.

Project Information

Project Name:

Conflict Affected Emergency Project

Report Date:

August, 2017

Main Sector:

Multisector

Country:

Sri Lanka

Project Number:

44065-013

Project/Modality: