PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID) IDENTIFICATION/CONCEPT STAGE Report No.: PIDC52778 Public Disclosure Copy Project Name Survey on Household Living Conditions Region EAST ASIA AND PACIFIC Country Myanmar Sector(s) General public administration sector (100%) Theme(s) Poverty strategy, analysis and monitoring (100%) Lending Instrument Lending Instrument Project ID P158724 Borrower Name Republic of the Union of Myanmar Implementing Agency Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development Environment Category C - Not Required Date PID Prepared 03-Mar-2016 Estimated Date of Approval 05-Apr-2016 Initiation Note Review The review did authorize the preparation to continue Decision I. Introduction and Context Country Context Myanmar is in the midst of a transition to democratic governance and openness and with its economy shifting from state-direction to market-orientation. In 2011, the government of President Public Disclosure Copy U Sein Thein announced an economic policy, which included statistical development as one of its four pillars. The first concrete result of the new policy was the successful implementation of the Population and Housing Census in 2014. In addition to this, the Government of Myanmar has embarked on a process to modernize the statistical legislation and institutional framework for official statistics in Myanmar as well as the development of the country’s first National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS). Despite recent improvement, Myanmar has been identified as one of 29 countries in the world with “extreme data deprivation” primarily due to limited availability of household and enterprise surveys. In particular, the country lacks up-to-date statistics on poverty and household welfare at the state and regional level. The last comprehensive integrated household survey was conducted in 2009/10. In 2014/15, the World Bank supported the Myanmar Poverty and Living Conditions Survey (MPLCS) to fill immediate data gaps at the national level. At a critical time for development policy and planning in the country, a strengthened statistical system of national household surveys, representative at the state and regional level, is urgently needed by the government and development partners. Sectoral and Institutional Context The Myanmar National Statistical System is highly decentralized and fragmented. Each line Page 1 of 6 ministry and agency is collecting data for their respective needs. Use of common statistical standards and practices across government ministries, departments and agencies is rare. Compliance with international standards is also low. While the CSO is the national statistical authority, its role Public Disclosure Copy has evolved to focus mainly on processing, compilation and dissemination of secondary data. An example of fragmentation is the high number of household surveys conducted by various ministries and agencies with little or no coordination or protocols in place to assure minimum statistical standards. This leads to duplication, respondent fatigue and uncertainty about quality. Myanmar’s NSDS outlines the institutional framework for guiding the production and dissemination of official statistics, and will give the CSO a stronger role in conducting and coordinating household surveys in the country. The World Bank is currently supporting the NSDS cluster focused on Survey Coordination and Statistical Standards and stands ready to support the implementation of the strategy. A key recommendation of the NSDS is to harmonize the system of national surveys. A first step is for the CSO to lead on a new large-scale integrated household survey representative at the state and regional level in late 2016/17. This will likely be done through reviewing the objectives and main indicators of the CSO’s Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), and building an improved survey design that is based on meeting these needs as well as meeting the objective of measuring welfare. The survey would be based on the HIES, but would draw upon good practices in the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey (IHLCS), Myanmar Poverty and Living Conditions Survey (MPLCS) and other similar such surveys in other countries. This project aims to support the CSO in taking the lead in coordinating and implementing national household surveys, with a particular focus on the next nationally representative large-scale integrated household survey in 2016/17. The World Bank has been requested to support the preparation and implementation of this survey together with UNDP. WBG and UNDP will be providing coordinated support to the government-led process. Public Disclosure Copy Relationship to CAS/CPS/CPF The Myanmar Country Partnership Framework (CPF) 2015-17 focuses on reducing rural poverty, providing basic services, and stimulating the private sector in an inclusive manner, so that especially the poor and vulnerable share in the benefits of reform. The CPF contains three focus areas and a number of cross-cutting activities. Development of national statistics is part of focus area 2: “Investing in people and effective institutions for people.” The CPF acknowledges that Myanmar is facing significant information and data gaps that make comprehensive diagnostics and targeting difficult. The planned Household Survey, which will be supported by this project, has explicitly been mentioned as a source of important monitoring information to assess the performance of the CPF. II. Project Development Objective(s) Proposed Development Objective(s) To improve the Central Statistical Organization of Myanmar’s capacity to produce and analyze quality household survey data. Key Results Page 2 of 6 Project results include: a) Development of a survey instrument drawing upon good practices from the HIES, IHLCA, Public Disclosure Copy MPLCS, and other similar such surveys in other countries. b) Implementation of a large-scale survey of household consumption and living conditions, which will also be used to calculate consumption weights for the consumer price index as well as household final consumption for the system of national accounts; c) Training of local staff and management in various aspects of household survey techniques. III. Preliminary Description Concept Description Currently several government survey in Myanmar cover the same topics. The HIES last conducted by CSO in 2012, the IHLCA last conducted by the Planning Department (PD) in 2009/10 and the MPLCS conducted under the supervision of the CSO and PD in 2015. These three surveys cover many similar topics and can effectively be combined to avoid duplication. The precise scope of this combined survey is still to be defined. As a next step, the CSO will organize a technical committee drawing its membership from relevant government stakeholders and development partners. Development Partners support for the new survey will be a collaborative effort by primarily World Bank and UNDP. In preparation for the survey, a clear set of activities have been identified which will strengthen household survey capacity and systems of the CSO. The project will support a series of activities aimed at supporting the CSO’s implementation of a large-scale integrated household survey in 2016/17. The support to the survey will be given in collaboration with UNDP, who have supported the previous IHCLA surveys in 2004/05 and 2009/10. The World Bank support through the TFSCB funding will be focused on strengthening necessary functions of the CSO to prepare and implement the survey through a series of technical assistance engagement. UNDP will focus its Public Disclosure Copy support on the implementation of the survey itself. The following activities are foreseen under the support. Develop integrated survey instrument, drawing upon good practice from previous household expenditure and living standards measurement surveys in Myanmar. For the new survey to meet the objectives of the HIES and IHLCS surveys, it will be important to design a survey instrument which meets the functionality of the three surveys, while ensuring, to the extent possible, comparability with the past instruments. Moreover, in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and changing national demands, it is a need to ensure that the survey will collect data on new indicators. In addition to modules needed for consumption based poverty estimates, the instrument will include a broad set of modules relevant to multiple sectors and aimed at gaining a better understanding of the root causes of poverty in its many dimensions, potentially including the measurement of income. To ensure that an efficient survey instrument meets its multiple demands, it is foreseen that considerable TA will be needed to help in the design, field piloting and quality assurance of the questionnaire, through consultative processes with all relevant stakeholders. The TA will be delivered through a combination of national and international survey expertise. Past household surveys in Myanmar have suffered from weak sampling design due to the lack of an appropriate sample frame. A key component of the World Bank’s work in preparing the MPLCS was to produce a new master sample frame based on the 2014 Census, which has since been used by Page 3 of 6 multiple national surveys in the country. The master sample frame was constructed through technical assistance given to the Department of Population (DoP) who carried out the Census data collection and processing. The HIES sampling frame is based on administrative population counts, Public Disclosure Copy which differs from the recent Population Census in the size of the population and shares across states and regions. In the current context, where the Government is seeking to strengthen the CSO coordination and its implementation role in household survey conduct, it will be important that the CSO builds capacity to draw samples for household surveys and to maintain a master sample frame. Therefore, the World Bank is proposing to strengthen sampling capacity in the CSO, which will ensure that the future survey will have an efficient and representative sample and ensure coordination of sample designs across surveys. A series of hands-on trainings will ensure that CSO can draw and maintain precise and effective samples for household surveys in the country. Data Processing - establish systems and capacity for data processing. An important function for the CSO is to strengthen its data processing systems and facilities. The CSO does currently not have modern data processing system, and had predominantly relied on Access databases and manual data cleaning processing methods, equipment and procedures. A recent business survey used CSPro for data entry, with enhanced procedures for checking data entry errors. The data entry program was however established by external actors, the capacity to do so does not currently reside within the CSO. The project will therefore seek to upgrade equipment, technical know-how and software for survey data processing. In particular, the project will seek to establish a data processing system with Census and Survey Processing System (CSPro) for entering, editing, tab ulating, and disseminating survey data. Furthermore, depending on CSO needs and interest, the project will consider to establish basic capacity for Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) systems with the World Bank’s CAPI software,Survey Solutions. While reliance on CAPI for the forthcoming survey may not be feasible right away, the CSO is likely to conduct surveys based on such platforms in the medium term, so establishing basic capacity for such systems will be important. Public Disclosure Copy Professional survey staff - establish and train professional cadre of survey staff. Past large scale surveys in Myanmar have been characterized by very short enumeration periods requiring a large number of enumerators and field supervisors, often temporarily assigning government staff from their normal jobs to conduct temporary field work with limited training. Township supervisors received two days of training in Nay Pyi Taw on the HIES. The training covered the objectives of the survey, sampling methodology, the role of the supervisor and detailed explanation of the HIES questionnaire. Although the topics coverage of this training was wide, the duration of the training would have limited the depth of coverage for each topic. For the forthcoming survey, there will be a greater focus on a smaller set of professional survey supervisors and on training enumerators who will enumerate the survey over a longer time period. Such a structure will require longer overall field times for the survey, but will ensure that quality is high and consistent across the country. The precise size and nature of the survey team will depend on the sample size of the survey, as well as the length of the questionnaire. The survey capacity will be established through a combination of national TA from experienced survey firms and experts, as well as international TA. Analysis - strengthen household survey analysis. The CSO presently has limited survey data analysis capacity and experience. A final component of the project will therefore to strengthen micro-data analysis skills. Such training will build on joint analysis and training already being conducted in analysis of existing data, including the MPLCS. The past HIES survey has been underutilized due to limited analysis capacity of the CSO, and the first stage of this component will Page 4 of 6 focus on analysis of existing data sets. Once data from the pilot activities of the forthcoming survey, as well as data from survey itself is, available this component will focus on integrated poverty analysis based on the new survey with the focus of rapidly and accurately producing the final reports Public Disclosure Copy and disseminating the survey data. IV. Safeguard Policies that Might Apply Safeguard Policies Triggered by the Project Yes No TBD Environmental Assessment OP/BP 4.01 ✖ Natural Habitats OP/BP 4.04 ✖ Forests OP/BP 4.36 ✖ Pest Management OP 4.09 ✖ Physical Cultural Resources OP/BP 4.11 ✖ Indigenous Peoples OP/BP 4.10 ✖ Involuntary Resettlement OP/BP 4.12 ✖ Safety of Dams OP/BP 4.37 ✖ Projects on International Waterways OP/BP 7.50 ✖ Projects in Disputed Areas OP/BP 7.60 ✖ V. Financing (in USD Million) Total Project Cost: 0.57 Total Bank Financing: 0 Financing Gap: 0 Financing Source Amount Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building 0.57 VI. Contact point Public Disclosure Copy World Bank Contact: Thomas Danielewitz Title: Senior Statistician Tel: 473-1407 Email: tdanielewitz@worldbank.org Contact: Reena Chandu Badiani-Magnusson Title: Senior Economist, Poverty Tel: 5274+304 / 9 Email: rbadiani@worldbank.org Borrower/Client/Recipient Name: Republic of the Union of Myanmar Contact: Title: Tel: Email: Implementing Agencies Name: Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development Contact: Wah Wah Maung Page 5 of 6 Title: Acting Director General Tel: 95-67-406325 Email: wwmaung@gmail.com Public Disclosure Copy VII. For more information contact: The InfoShop The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20433 Telephone: (202) 458-4500 Fax: (202) 522-1500 Web: http://www.worldbank.org/infoshop Public Disclosure Copy Page 6 of 6