Most WB projects are on track
The World Bank found that 70 percent of its projects in Bangladesh are on track and officials attributed the success to regular review by implementing agencies and the global lender.
The WB will review progress of its 34 ongoing projects at a two-day meeting beginning today to identify the problems the sluggish projects are facing and set an action plan.
The lender already identified that 24 of its projects are heading in the right direction, while the rest are not. Of the 10 projects that are off the track, disbursement in five was very low compared to aid commitment, according to a progress report prepared by the lender.
The total disbursement in the 34 projects was $1.98 billion or 36 percent of the total aid commitment of $5.47 billion.
WB Country Director Johannes Zutt said, there are many reasons why a project is not satisfactory. "It is not always because of fraud and corruption; I want to be very clear about that; it can be, but there are many other reasons.”
Giving an example, he said, in the run-up to the national elections there were a lot of shutdowns which made it very difficult for many projects to stay on schedule as people were not in offices regularly.
"So, things slipped. That can make a project unsatisfactory," he said at a recent event.
Zutt said they want to cut losses. "I don't want to throw good money after bad. If things are not working I would prefer to close it down."
"On the other hand, the good is that if things are working, because we have also projects that are performing very well, I would like to follow that up with more money," he said.
Last year, the WB committed $1.9 billion, which includes $300 million taken away from the projects that were not working and then recommitted, Zutt said.
He said the lender has a process which requires it every six months to look at how projects are performing. "We rate them on a six-point scale from highly satisfactory to highly unsatisfactory."
One of the 10 projects that are off the track is Shiddhirganj power plant for which the lender committed $350 million in October 2008. Only 68 percent of the project money could be spent so far.
After a review in March, an action plan was given to speed up work, but progress is still unsatisfactory.
However, an official of the Economic Relations Division said significant progress has been achieved after the review, as disbursement was only 35 percent of the commitment in February.
Two water supply projects, including one in Chittagong, also got poor scores.
On the Chittagong Water Supply Improvement project, the government could spend only 4.5 percent of the aid commitment of $156 million in more than four years.
Of the 34 projects, the WB identified five where the rate of disbursement is very low. In these projects, the lender's total commitment was $1.6 billion but the disbursement rate is only 5.8 percent although around 2.5 years have passed since the activation of the loans.
The routine review also highlighted the success of the well-performing projects.
The Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement project with a commitment of $395 million is one such project that has met and in some cases surpassed five of the six key performance indicators, the WB said.
To date, 1.8 million students have benefitted from the targeted stipends and tuition for secondary education, and 57 percent of them were girls.
The WB also found the Emergency 2007 Cyclone Recovery and Restoration project worth $324 million to be “progressing well”. Most outcome targets should be achievable by the closing date of December 31, 2017, it said.
Of the 24 on-track projects, at least half has a disbursement rate between 50 percent and 88 percent.
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