Tunisia - Irrigation Management Improvement Project

 Irrigation management improvement project Report No: ; Type: Report/Evaluation Memorandum ; Country: Tunisia; Region: Middle East And North Africa; Sector: Irrigation & Drainage; Major Sector: Agriculture; ProjectID: P005661 Tunisia: Irrigation Management Improvement Project (Loan 2573-TUN) The Tunisia Irrigation Management Improvement project and Loan 2573-TUN for US$22.0 million were approved in FY85. The European Community cofinanced about US$3.3 million for the technical assistance component. The loan closed in June 1995, after being extended by three years. US$5.0 million had been canceled in 1990 at government request. The Implementation Completion Report (ICR) was prepared by the FAO/World Bank Cooperative Program and finalized by the Middle East and North Africa Regional Office. Appendix 2 is a translation of the borrower's final report dated August 1995 and the borrower's comments on the draft ICR have been incorporated. The cofinancier was not given the opportunity to comment. The project aimed to: (i) increase sustainable agricultural production and incomes of some 42,000 small farmers on public irrigation schemes; (ii) create employment; (iii) eliminate the operating deficits of the agencies which manage the schemes; and (iv) improve the regular maintenance of schemes. The project comprised strengthening the management of operation and maintenance (O&M) of the schemes by equipment investments, institutional and policy changes_ including increasing the participation of farmers' associations in O&M_and by training; upgrading parts of the irrigation system; improving water delivery and services to farmers, and the recovery of related costs; on-farm development financed partly by credit; and technical assistance for irrigation agencies. This ambitious and overly complex project took longer than planned to implement and some components had to be modified or dropped, but the results from the remaining components were generally satisfactory. Implementation was delayed initially in 1985-86 by lack of political support, and was then weak for four years until the government changed the project director in 1991. In the meantime, reorganization of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1989 had made much of the institutional design redundant, but formal restructuring of the project was not carried out. With extension of the loan closing date, physical investments were largely completed; O&M of the irrigation system improved, including an increase in the farmers' role in O&M, but maintenance expenditures remained inadequate; and water pricing and cost recovery initiatives went largely according to plan. Since the project lacked a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) component, its impact on production, the main objective, and on incomes and employment creation is not known_and therefore the economic rate of return (ERR) was not re-estimated. The Operations Evaluation Department (OED) rates the project outcome as marginally satisfactory, noting that there was little or no progress on a number of important components. This is consistent with the ICR rating. OED also agrees with the ICR's rating of institutional development as modest and sustainability as likely. The ICR's rating of Bank performance as satisfactory is not endorsed by OED. The project's design was too complex and lacked provisions for M&E, supervision inputs were half the norm although the project had substantial early problems (which were not reflected in supervision performance ratings), and the same staff member (an engineer) was solely responsible for supervision throughout. The ICR notes that it would have been preferable to have had staff with other skills work on resolving project problems, some of which remained unresolved. The main lessons in the ICR concern the need for a more manageable project design (a point also made by the borrower), the importance of monitoring and evaluation, and the need for formal review and modification when a project's design has to change to meet new circumstances. OED agrees with these points, and adds that when a project is experiencing problems an appropriate broad range of staff skills should be provided during supervision. The ICR is satisfactory but does not contain the mission's aide memoire, and its complexity mirrors that of the project. No audit is planned.