Egypt local development II program (263-0182) : evaluation report

Results were mixed. On the positive side, systems for planning and implementing BSDSs have been established in each governorate. Local popular and executive council members, along with governorate, markaz, and village/district officials, have planned and implemented 17,000 BSDS subprojects which have provided basic services in water, electricity, roads, wastewater, and school renovation. In addition, many facilities were put in place under the operations and maintenance (O&M) component, including, inter alia, 875 village workshops, 175 markaz maintenance centers, and 31 zonal/district workshops and central garages/workshops. All told, BSDS services have benefitted nearly 90% of Egypt"s rural and urban population. Finally, improvement in local government capacity to implement BSDSs was demonstrated at all levels. Notable achievements included training of over 94,000 governorate staff through Governorate Training Centers, and establishment in each governorate of a maintenance coordinator and of management information systems (MIS) which use quarterly data to allocate funds for local subprojects. Prospects for sustaining these achievements are mixed, however. The MIS exhibits the greatest potential, as long as the Office of Cabinet Affairs requires automated retrieval of governorate information; the Land Management Units and the Offices of Analysis and Financial Development also show promise. Sustainability of other elements is unlikely. Prospects for O&M are dim due to the Government of Egypt"s (GOE) failure to address recurrent cost funding, and only a handful of established training institutions have incorporated project-designed training programs into their curriculum. As for institution-building, the project"s use of block grant funding, which provided the greatest stimulus in this area, has not been institutionalized by the GOE, and there exist no central coordinating agencies linked to the Ministry of Local Administration (MLA) to assist in developing guidelines for local efforts. Overall, the project erred in linking local institutional development to GOE policy and organizational changes. Well-entrenched and powerful elements in the GOE will dominate local bodies for years to come. The LRM component was limited by existing law, which does not allow local authorities to collect, manage, and retain significant amounts of money. Nevertheless, numerous local attempts are made by rural and urban governorates to generate revenue for basic services, including fees-for-service, income generation, cost recovery, assessments, leasing of public facilities to private operators, privatizing public enterprises, and voluntary contributions. There has been no evidence of cooperation among the Ministry of Finance, the MLA, and local administrative units to promote and support LRM. In sum, the purpose of the LRM component was not met and is not likely to be met for years to come. The following lessons were learned. (1) Infrastructure development, which immediately affects much of the population, is an effective incentive for innovations in administrative and government systems in which improved performance is not immediately felt or credited to the proper source. (2) Basing sustainability of basic services on a major policy change at the GOE level was unrealistic. In practice, local projects are most likely to be sustained with local initiatives not sanctioned in any way by the GOE. (3) Had project activities been set within the GOE rather than within a parallel structure which the GOE administrative organization is not equipped to direct, the chances of sustainability would have increased.