Agricultural sector

Audit report covers the period 1/75-9/79 and is based on site visits, document review, and interviews with USAID/B and Government of Bolivia (GOB) officials. The program goal of raising rural incomes has not been achieved; in fact, sector GDP declined 1.7% each year from 1975 to 1978. This minimal impact is due to the slow implementation of early projects and the newness of later projects, inadequate political and financial support, and bad weather. Regarding training, the GOB offers salaries too low to retain qualified trainees and has not billed a returnee for breach of contract; USAID/B has not checked on post-training, job-related problems and has kept inadequate records. Commodity procurement has been excessively slow and control over the receipt, storage, and distribution of commodities is weak. Technical assistance has lacked effective counterpart relationships, adequate work plans, timely advisor recruitment, Spanish-language capability, and an adequate skill mix. Construction has been slower than planned (only two of 25 activities completed), due primarily to a lack of GOB funding, as well as to slow land acquisition, and inadequate GOB and USAID/B site supervision and inspection. In many cases, USAID/B has not taken timely and effective action to identify and resolve problems related to GOB pricing policies, use of AID-financed equipment, construction, counterpart relationships, and compliance with A.I.D. regulations. Moreover, the design (including logframes) and evaluation of projects needs to be improved. To address the above shortcomings, the auditors present 17 project-specific recommendations for USAID/B action (of which six have already been acted upon). More generally, the auditors counsel the GOB to increase financial support of public sector agencies, adopt pricing policies that provide small farmers with greater incentives, and increase the supply of fertilizer and improved seed and the services supplied by the soil testing labratory.