USAID Firms Project Performance Monitoring Plan

The project was signed between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Pragma Corporation on August 31, 2015. The FMD Project seeks to address critical factors limiting the deepening and diversification of the overall capital market financing and restraining the demand for innovative capital market instruments. The project will work with key public and private sector institutional actors to prioritize and develop a consensus on how to effectively address these key constraints. FMD will support the implementation of technical, training, and outreach activities designed to move critical capital market reforms forward. The project's overall goal is to improve the economic status of focus populations by increasing access to finance, improving skill development, and creating an enabling environment. The Performance Management Plan (PMP) is a critical component of the FMD Project, designed to assist in setting up and managing the process of monitoring, analyzing, evaluating, and reporting progress toward achieving project results. The PMP indicators will guide the measurement of the project's progress by enabling comparison of intended results with actual achievement. The plan will be utilized to provide regular feedback and direction to FMD Project management and to communicate results to USAID and other key stakeholders. The PMP will be managed by the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Unit of the FMD Project, under the supervision of the Chief of Party (COP). The M&E Unit is responsible for tracking project progress, collecting, analyzing, and reporting data according to the description in the PMP Matrix. The data collection tools will include notes on project meetings, periodic project/progress reports, monitoring visits, direct observations, focus group discussions, meetings with relevant stakeholders, specific studies, and other secondary sources. The data analysis will be conducted using various tools to determine achievement against each PMP indicator and to learn lessons for further improvement. The data will be disaggregated in a number of dimensions, including geographical region, intervention theme, stakeholders, etc. whenever possible. The reporting will include project meeting reports, project reports/plans, quarterly performance monitoring reports, annual performance monitoring reports, and an end-of-project report. The Results Framework of the FMD Project is shown in Figure 1, which outlines the overall goal and four results sub-divided into intermediate results. The project will pursue its overall goal by focusing on four results sub-divided into intermediate results, including increased access to finance, improved skill development, improved enabling environment, and strengthened government and private sector engagement in policy-making. The FMD Project will achieve its overall goal by implementing several key activities, including increasing new loans accessed by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), improving the capacity of banks to lend to SMEs, training financial intermediaries in SME lending, improving the capacity of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in planning, issuing, and managing medium-term debt securities, increasing the number of government staff knowledgeable in policy development, analysis, and implementation, and increasing the capacity of the private sector to improve the efficiency of financial markets. The project will also strengthen linkages between the government and private sector on policy-making, increase the number of government staff knowledgeable in policy development, analysis, and implementation, and increase the capacity of the private sector to improve the efficiency of financial markets. The project's results will be monitored and evaluated regularly to ensure that the project is on track to achieve its overall goal and to identify areas for improvement.