Final report : agribusiness and artisanry project, La Paz, Bolivia

TA was successfully provided. Because BCB"s Development Department was overburdened with processing loans, CI recommended creation of an in-house unit to oversee the loan programs and the transfer of responsibility for the loan approval process to ICI"s. So far, however, a number of strikes at BCB has prevented implementation of these recommendations. As for the ICI"s, CI first worked with one as a pilot case and used this experience to help five others develop specific methods for improving their administrative systems in the areas of: (1) portfolio management; (2) Development Department organization; (3) marketing, budgeting, management, and cost accounting; and (4) management information systems. Due to the insufficient time allotted for follow-up, however, implementation of these changes is far from complete. A series of 2-day training seminars (including tests and case studies) was given to ICI senior and mid-level managers (attendance averaging 15-20 per bank) in marketing, budgeting, cost accounting, and management. CI also presented three 2-week credit analysis seminars in the basic finance tools required for loan analysis and approval. Although the training was not completed, teaching materials exist and several of the trainees need only additional exposure to the "case method" in order to do a reasonable job. Guidelines were developed for establishing a statistical system to enable ICI, BCB, and USAID/B to monitor loan activities and their impact on the small farmer. Operations manuals for the analysis and disbursement of credit and loan portfolio management are nearly complete and include chapters on cost accounting, strategic planning, marketing, budgeting, and management. Besides the strikes at BCB, major problems encountered were BCB"s failure to provide CI with logistic support and its lack of commitment to CI"s proposed training of trainers program; the latter problem must be corrected if the impact of project TA is to be lasting.