A 2010 evaluation by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) of its urban services projects in Indonesia revealed that the success rate of projects under the multi-subsector approach is 44% compared with 68% for other projects.
Until the late 1990s, urban infrastructure and municipal services (e.g., water supply, sanitation, and urban roads) in Indonesia were provided by respective line ministries which were centrally managed. Subsequent to the passage of decentralisation laws, urban municipalities and cities became responsible for providing such infrastructure as well as for securing the funds for them. As the local authorities lacked the capacity and the resources to match their new responsibilities, ADB and other organizations increased their efforts to support the urban sector. ADB expected that the multi-sector approach would lead to “cost savings in designing and implementing different subsector investments simultaneously in the same location or by integrating different stages of the service delivery in one project”.
From the executive summary of the evaluation report:
Although ADB did not have prior experience in designing and implementing multi-subsector projects in Indonesia or in other countries, it supported the government’s strong view that multi-subsector projects could be effectively implemented through “learning-by-doing.” ADB did not pilot the integrated urban infrastructure development program (IUIDP) in Indonesia before embarking on full-scale multi-subsector operations.
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Local authorities in Indonesia lacked adequate capacity to plan, coordinate, and implement projects across a wide range of urban subsectors, and could not therefore effectively reap the benefits, intended outcomes, and impacts. The projects’ poor success, as reflected in project performance evaluation reports, also reflects the overall difficult realities facing urban projects, including inadequate government infrastructure financing systems and the decentralization movement.
The main recommendations of the evaluation are:
- the multi-subsector approach (vis-à-vis other approaches) should not be adopted in urban projects unless there is adequate local capacity, a set of clear financial procedures, a local champion for the project, and a single coordinating authority
- if local conditions do not favor adoption of a multi-subsector approach, then ADB should adopt a sector-specialized approach with fewer components (e.g., the conventional three components of water supply, sanitation, and capacity building)
- there should be a financing scheme that strongly supports the multi-subsector approach
- a focused and long-term vision of ADB’s role in capacity building should be developed.
Read the evaluation report and other related documents here.
