Management and Productivity Center (MPC)

The evaluation covered the project"s first 18 months (2/85-8/87) and was based in part on structured interviews with MPC clients. MPC"s management training has been effective and client satisfaction high, although Haiti"s current economic and political crisis precludes seeing performance improvements in participating firms. The revenue from seminars is likely to cover variable costs, but only make a minor contribution to fixed costs. The market for MPC"s major consulting product - loan project packaging - has turned out to be very limited. The original assumption that the Haitian Development Foundation would provide a sufficient "captive" supply of micro-enterpreneurs has proven invalid, and workshop pricing, type, and length of courses are only now becoming appropriate to the needs of the sector. Only 51 micro-entrepreneurs have attended training courses to date, and fees have had to be substantially reduced to attract them. The project teaches several important lessons. Following the fundamental development axiom that a project is based on changeable political, economic, and social assumptions, it is necessary to be flexible in order to adjust to new conditions and maximize the chances of success. Also, in service-oriented, private sector projects of this type, the temptation to add a greater variety of services in order to achieve financial self-sufficiency should be resisted, since each new service usually adds to the costs and complexity of the business or project. Such a path also tends to deflect management from its basic priority, which is increasing the volume of the basic, core services to the point where they become financially viable. The Mission generally agrees with the evaluation, although it found the brief "democratization" section lacking in depth. Also, the Mission agrees that the MPC should find ways to improve the measuring of client performance after services, but feels that evaluation recommendation on this point fails to suggest means which differ from the auto-measurements currently in use. Finally, MPC management, arguing on the basis of the flexibility built into the project, defends its efforts thus far to explore various income-generating management services rather than restrict its efforts to seminar and workshop offerings. Nine action decisions are included. (Author abstract, modified)