ADB projects in Asia get rating of ‘poor’

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said outcomes of its projects completed in the region last year fell below target despite improvements in delivery.

Based on a scorecard of the ADB’s performance last year, fleshed out in a report, titled “Development Effectiveness Review 2011,” the bank failed to meet 80 percent of its goals and got a rating of “poor.” The report was released Thursday.

According to the scorecard system that the ADB has been using since 2008, a poor rating means that only half or less of key performance indicators (KPIs) are above target.

Even then, the report found that project outputs due for delivery between 2009 and 2012 generally remained on track.

The analysis of ADB’s performance was based on 76 government projects and 14 private-sector projects that the multilateral agency helped fund. These were completed last year.

4 projects in PH

The projects included four that were implemented in the Philippines. The privatization and rehabilitation of the Masinloc coal-fired power plant were considered “highly successful” and “highly effective.”

Three projects got lower ratings—the development of urban poor communities (partly successful, less effective), a Southern Philippines irrigation project (partly successful, less effective), and support for government spending toward recovering from the financial crisis (successful, effective).

The latest of the ADB’s yearly performance reports also noted that Asia and the Pacific continued to cut poverty levels in 2011 on the back of further sustained economic growth.

However, inequality in the region is rising and some poorer countries are struggling to meet many of their 2015 Millennium Development Goals, such as primary education completion rates, child mortality and access to clean water and sanitation.

“The ADB continued to make operational and organizational improvements in 2011, indicating that efforts to strengthen our development effectiveness are working,” managing director general Rajat Nag said.

“We must persist with these efforts to overcome the performance challenges highlighted in the report and bring greater benefits to the poor in Asia and the Pacific,” Nag said.

He added that in response to the results of the review, the ADB would fully implement recently approved initiatives to strengthen project implementation and outcomes, and to streamline business processes designed to speed up project delivery.