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‘State Restructuring affects ADB’s Projects’

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 ‘State Restructuring affects ADB’s Projects’
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August 3: Asian Development Bank’s active investment in Nepal as of June 2018 stands at $ 2.3 billion. According to the ADB, it has been supporting 33 projects at present.

Following good performance in 2017, the ADB at the country portfolio review meeting in February 2018 had noted the optimistic targets by government agencies— around $447 million for contract award and about $338 million for disbursement.

However, Diwesh Sharan, Deputy Director General of South Asia Department (SARD) of ADB said in a Tripartite Portfolio Review Meeting on August 2 that the achievement as of June- end 2018 has been slow with 23 percent contract award of the annual target and 32 percent disbursement of the annual target.

“Clearly, challenges remain and there is a need to focus on further improvements in procurement documents and evaluation scrutiny; stringent contract management to contain implementation and fiduciary risks; sound safeguard management, including environmental management; and deputation of competent project staff,” Sharan said during the opening remarks of the meeting.

“I would like to specially highlight the slow progress of few flagships projects – Tribhuvan International Airport, Gautam Buddha Airport (although with some recent improvements), Melamchi Water Supply and its associated Kathmandu Valley Water Supply Projects. Close monitoring of progress and decisive actions are needed for the civil aviation and water supply projects to improve and accelerate implementation, and to ensure targets and results can be achieved for these flagship projects,” he added.

According to the ADB, the release of budget to the provincial and local governments for the Fiscal Year 2018/2019 after state restructuring has affected few ADB supported projects in terms of implementation arrangements and fund flow mechanism.

Sharan urged the Ministry of Finance and concerned ministries to agree on time bound actions to ensure effective project implementation.   

Continued improvement of Nepal’s portfolio performance is critical to increasing ADB assistance in future in line with its performance-based allocation policy, a statement issued by the ADB quoted Sharan as saying.

 

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