Evaluation review : sub-tropical lands development project

Special evaluation (a summary of an unattached 8 volume, 560-page final evaluation in Spanish) covers the period 6/78-9/82. The project has achieved some of its objectives. Construction targets have been fully met for new roads, existing road improvements, and grain storage facilities. However, road costs were higher than budgeted and maintenance has been inadequate; grain stores are far from markets, lack a maintenance fund, and have inadequate ventilation and rain protection. Although no crop yield increases resulted, agricultural extension was initially relatively successful (increasing staff by 76% and equipment by 63%; providing farmer courses/meetings); but with the 10/81 switch from group extension to an approach using contact-farmers to pass on extension messages to other farmers, progress has been limited. Participants have not been well chosen, messages are stereotyped and not locally adapted, and the system has failed to multiply. While 51% of planned loans to farmers have been disbursed and loan recovery has been around 70%, the credit program has been seriously hampered by an overemphasis on equipment purchases (often for unsuitable land-clearing machinery), lack of extension, and a cumbersome credit mechanism. Most seriously, with inflation at 100% and an interest rate of only 32.5% the loan fund is rapidly being eroded. The lack of available credit has also limited land clearing (to 18% of the target), land preparation (34%), and threshing (3%). Topographic surveying/mapping activities have been completed, but the cadaster survey and land titling have lagged; only 35% of adjudication contracts and 77% of reversion resolutions have been issued. Although natural resource studies have been carried out, the overall environmental protection plan (due in 1981) remains incomplete due in part to a lack of aerial photography. Numerous recommendations include to: extend the loan agreement; add research, agro-industry, forestry, and fishery components and increase coordination among components; and speed up the resource evaluation program.