Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) SOUTH ASIA | Afghanistan | Transport & ICT Global Practice | IBRD/IDA | Emergency Recovery Loan | FY 2012 | Seq No: 8 | ARCHIVED on 18-Nov-2015 | ISR20490 | Implementing Agencies: Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Rural Reconstruction and Development Key Dates Key Project Dates Bank Approval Date:26-Jun-2012 Effectiveness Date:12-Aug-2012 Planned Mid Term Review Date:15-Jan-2015 Actual Mid-Term Review Date:15-Sep-2015 Original Closing Date:31-Mar-2018 Revised Closing Date:31-Mar-2018 Project Development Objectives Project Development Objective (from Project Appraisal Document) The project development objective is to enable rural communities to benefit from all-season road access to basic services and facilities. Has the Project Development Objective been changed since Board Approval of the Project Objective? No PHRPDODEL Components Name Component A - Improvement and maintenance of secondary roads:(Cost $186.00 M) Component B - Improvement and maintenance of tertiary roads:(Cost $128.00 M) Component C- Program Planning and Development, Institutional Strengthening and Program Coordination Support:(Cost $18.00 M) Overall Ratings Name Previous Rating Current Rating Progress towards achievement of PDO  Satisfactory  Satisfactory Overall Implementation Progress (IP)  Satisfactory  Satisfactory Overall Risk Rating  High  High Implementation Status and Key Decisions 11/18/2015 Page 1 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) 1. PDO is still relevant to entire country development priorities. The Afghanistan Rural Access Project (ARAP) is follow-on project to the series of Bank’s supports made in the last ten years to the government through National Rural Access Program (NRAP). NRAP is one of the 23 National Priority Programs (NPP) of the country. The project’s development objective, (PDO) “to enable rural communities to benefit from all-season road access to basic services and facilities access to basic services and facilities in rural areas of Afghanistan” derived from the NRAP’s overarching program objective, as strong contributor to local economy is still in high priority of the government. Over the past 2.5 years, the country transport sector still faces the challenges of connectivity and accessibility, with only 58 percent of the rural population has basic access to an all season road. This means that over two-thirds of Afghans do not have access to basic services (health, education) and economic opportunities (markets, jobs) either physically or virtually. The project helps the country to improve 7 percent more (up to 65 percent) population to have basic access to all season roads. 2. The designed components are still relevant to the PDO. The project consisted of three main components A, B and C: Component A worth US$ 186 million for improvement of collectively 1250 Km consisted of 1000km unpaved and 250 km paved surface secondary/district roads and construction of 1000rm bridges as well as routine and periodic maintenance of 1000 km of pre-rehabilitated of same class maintainable roads. Component B worth US$ 128 million is allocated to improve 1300Km gravel surfaced village roads and construction of 1600rm bridges as well as routine/ periodic maintenance of 2000km of Pre-rehabilitated network in maintainable condition of the same class. While component C worth US$ 18 million is allocated for program planning, developing, institutional strengthening and program coordination support. All these components directly deal with the shortages of road infrastructure and focus on the capacity gaps of the country. Over the past 2.5 years since the project commence, the shortage of road infrastructure and capacity gaps still remains challenges for the sector. 3. Overall project progresses very well with good economic returns. The project was approved on June 26 and made effective on August 12, 2012. Unpaved roads in the project were selected by taking into account several economic, social and geographical factors, e.g. population, network functions, with/without markets, etc. Paved roads are selected based on economic analysis with ERR greater than 22%. Initial activities including survey, design and procurement are mostly completed and there is capacity available at both PIUs to absorb more. As of June 30th, 2015, nearly 98% of the survey, design work and procurement had been completed. Also, physical progress of road construction / rehabilitation works 410 km (41%) for secondary gravel roads and 105kms (42%) for secondary asphalt roads, 910 km (70%) for tertiary roads have now opened to the traffic. Meanwhile, bridge construction of 880 (88%) linear meter on secondary roads and 1072 (67%) of linear meter on tertiary roads have been completed and opened to traffic. Overall the physical progress is ahead of schedule. In the meantime, the baseline survey report has been completed and disseminated. The capacity building activities is progressing well and major activities including setting up a GIS based rural road networking have already been started and progressing well. The data collection for road inventory and condition survey has been 50% completed and the rest will be completed in the next six months. The construction of regional offices and labs is going on well and expected to be completed by end of 2015. Overall non works is progressing well on the schedule except that Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) data collection is slightly lagged behind schedule. 4. It is expected to complete all agreed $322 million investment by the end of 2016 or the first quarter of 2017, which is about 1 year ahead of fund close date. However, within existing $322 investment envelop, achievements of the PDO indicator of “Number of rural people with access to an all-season road” will reach about 63 percent which is about 1 to 2 percent % shortfall than target 65 percent; while the intermediate level indicator of “Km of gravel surfaced secondary roads rehabilitated” will be about650 km comparing with the targets of 1000km. These shortfalls are due to the cost underestimation of secondary road which was discovered in tender stage (See the section of “Key issues and Actions for Management Attention” for more information). 5. Additional funds are needed to fill the financial gaps in secondary road and scale up the project benefits. Without the additional finance to cover the financial gaps, the designed scope of work will not be achieved. As the project roads are prioritized and selected based on several factors. Hence, with the additional finance, the project will still be economically viable. Moreover, the project delivers results with high efficiency, and both central and local governments have high expectations to scale up the project to achieve more benefits. The government requested about $300 million for the additional finance; and the Bank will be 6. Shortfalls for SDR: Due to exchange rate variations of SDR, the project has the shortfall of 3 million US Dollar. However, project has savings on program coordination. The saved amount can cover the shortfall of exchange rate. 7. Implementation capacity has been considerably improved along with materialized reforms to PIUs by the line ministries: The project was designed to have a leadership panel formed by Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Public Works and Ministry of Rural Reconstructions and Development. The panel provides timely leadership and directions to 2 Project Implementation Units (PIUs) from MPW and MRRD respectively, and National Coordination Unit (NCU) managed by MOF. PIUs and NCU coordinates with each other on rolling bases and work very efficiently. Their effective works have brought significant benefits to the project, e.g. the PIUs brought more than $10 million non-works savings to support cost variations from works. 8. UNOPS has faded out and government has gradually taken over all implementation responsibilities. UNOPS had been involved as the Implementation Partner (IP) in the previous National Emergency Rural Access Project. The project was designed and reduced the UNOPS’ function to International Consultant (IC). Since the project commence, the line ministries firstly took over the PIU from UNOPS as their own contracted staff; and gradually took over most of procurement and technical responsibilities. In the past 2.5 years, such reform has pulled out ownerships of line ministries and PIUs and shown great success. Building on the success, since the beginning of 2015, line ministries and MOF have taken Financial Management responsibilities back to government spending system. Now UNOPS has moved out from MRRD PIU and will be moving out from MPW in the next 6 months. By studying the added value from UNOPS, government is now carrying out further reform to PIUs by reorganizing PIU as state owned consulting service. Such reform not only provides sustainable jobs for the PIU staff but also will secure the implementation capacity acquired in the past decade and cultivate domestic consulting market. On the other hand, since the UNOPS leaves, the bottlenecks of the government budget execution system become a major obstacle of project operation, Contractors 11/18/2015 Page 2 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) involved in the project are facing serious payment delays (more than 60 days late than contract stipulated). Now MRRD, MPW and MOF are trying to resolve the disbursement delays by the end of 2015. 9. Disbursement has been delayed since the beginning of 2015. This is due to the reason that, the UNOPS faded out its involvements in the project and the project is suffering from the government budget execution bottlenecks. The project FM rating is now downgraded to “MS”; and the government is taking actions to have special arrangements to this project and resolve the disbursement delay issues by the end of 2015. 10. Review of PDO and intermediate indicators: Generally the indicators are found easy to understand and collect; however, some revision may be needed for the 2 PDO indicators, namely “Percent (%) reduction in travel time by 4-wheeled vehicles along roads improved under the project” and “Increased frequency of trips to nearest essential services (including town markets, schools, and health facilities) connected by the roads improved under the project”. The indicators were always misunderstood during baseline survey; and this significantly delayed the finalization of the baseline report at the inception. The 2 indicators will be changed into “Percent reduction in travel time to health facilities, town markets and locations within the province by 4-wheeled vehicles” and “Increased frequency of trips between village district center, and provincial center” respectively. 11. Legal, Fiduciary and Safeguards aspects: All legal covenants have been fulfilled without delay except one on baseline survey which is due to the access difficulties to sites. Fiduciary management has been rated “Satisfactory” only recently FM is downgraded to “MS” due to the bottlenecks of government spending system. Safeguards have been rated “Satisfactory” and Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) has been found working very efficient. Even social team has chosen the project GRM as a good case for further study. Gender development is another good achievement together with physical works. Gender Manual has been derived from the PIU and been reviewed by the Bank team. ARAP is one of the first batch of projects which applies gender manual to guide the gender development in Afghanistan Portfolio. 11/18/2015 Page 3 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) Risks Systematic Operations Risk-rating Tool Risk Category Rating at Approval Previous Rating Current Rating Political and Governance  --  High  High Macroeconomic  --  Substantial  Substantial Sector Strategies and Policies  --  Substantial  Substantial Technical Design of Project or Program  --  Moderate  Moderate Institutional Capacity for Implementation and Sustainability  --  Substantial  Substantial Fiduciary  --  Substantial  Substantial Environment and Social  --  Substantial  Substantial Stakeholders  --  Substantial  Substantial Other  --  Substantial  Substantial Overall  --  High  High Results 11/18/2015 Page 4 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) Project Development Objective Indicators PHINDPDOTBL  Share of rural population with access to an all-season road (Percentage, Core) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 58.00 -- -- 65.00 Date 12-Dec-2014 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDPDOTBL  Number of rural people with access to an all-season road (Number, Core Supplement) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 -- -- 1500000.00 PHINDPDOTBL  Percent reduction in travel time by a 4-wheel drive vehicle along roads improved under the project (Text, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target public clinic-1hour public hospital-2.hours reduced by district center-1.8 hours Value -- -- 30% from provincial center-6.4 hours baseline closest market -1.4 hours Date 12-Dec-2014 15-Dec-2014 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDPDOTBL  Increased frequency of trips to nearest essential services (including town markets, schools and health facilities) connected by the roads improved under the project (Text, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target 42% male travel daily to from village district center and 39% to provincial and Increased by Value other location within the -- -- 15% from province. This 20% and baseline 16% for female respectively Date -- 15-Dec-2014 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 11/18/2015 Page 5 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) Overall Comments Closest market -1.4 hours Public clinic- 1 hour Public hospital 2 hours District center- 1.8 hours Provincial center-6.4 hours Intermediate Results Indicators PHINDIRITBL  Roads constructed, Rural (Kilometers, Core) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 1320.00 1320.00 2550.00 Date -- 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDIRITBL  Km of gravel surfaced secondary roads rehabilitated (Kilometers, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 410.00 410.00 1000.00 Date -- 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 -- PHINDIRITBL  Km of asphalt surfaced secondary roads rehabilitated (Kilometers, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 105.00 105.00 250.00 Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 -- 11/18/2015 Page 6 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) PHINDIRITBL  Km of gravel surfaced tertiary roads rehabilitated (Kilometers, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 910.00 910.00 1300.00 Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDIRITBL  Improved Network Management system in place (Text, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target The system in place The system in place and Value No system in place and under testing. under testing. Inventory -- Inventory onging onging Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 01-Sep-2015 PHINDIRITBL  Construction of bridges on secondary roads (Meter(m), Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 880.00 880.00 1000.00 Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDIRITBL  Construction of bridges on tertiary roads (Meter(m), Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 1072.00 1072.00 1600.00 Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 11/18/2015 Page 7 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) PHINDIRITBL  Km of secondary roads under routine and periodic maintenance scheme (Kilometers, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 1533.00 1533.00 1000.00 Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDIRITBL  Km of tertiary roads under routine and periodic maintenance scheme (Kilometers, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 3750.00 3750.00 2000.00 Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 30-Sep-2017 PHINDIRITBL  Complete Road Inventory (Percentage, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value 0.00 50.00 50.00 -- Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 01-Sep-2015 PHINDIRITBL  Design standards developed and adopted (Text, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Design Standard Design Standard developed. Further Value Ad-hoc standard used developed. Further -- enhancement is enhancement is needed. needed. Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2014 16-Jul-2014 01-Oct-2016 11/18/2015 Page 8 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) PHINDIRITBL  Cost estimation system developed and fully functional (Yes/No, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target Value N Y Y -- Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 01-Oct-2014 PHINDIRITBL  Financial Management System in MRRD and MPW developed and functional (Text, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target System developed and System developed and Functional. Further Value No system Functional. Further -- enhancement is enhancement is needed. needed. Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 01-Oct-2014 PHINDIRITBL  Road Sector Organizational Study Prepared (Text, Custom) Baseline Actual (Previous) Actual (Current) End Target This is postponed as This is postponed as USAID is doing this Value -- USAID is doing this -- under a large TA under a large TA project project Date 01-Oct-2012 16-Jul-2015 28-Sep-2015 01-Oct-2015 Overall Comments Data on Financial Performance Disbursements (by loan) Project Loan/Credit/TF Status Currency Original Revised Cancelled Disbursed Undisbursed Disbursed P125961 IDA-H7920 Effective USD 125.00 125.00 0.00 109.40 12.51 88% P125961 TF-13093 Effective USD 207.00 207.00 0.00 67.02 139.98 32% Key Dates (by loan) 11/18/2015 Page 9 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy Public Disclosure Copy The World Bank Implementation Status & Results Report Afghanistan Rural Access Project (P125961) Project Loan/Credit/TF Status Approval Date Signing Date Effectiveness Date Orig. Closing Date Rev. Closing Date P125961 IDA-H7920 Effective 26-Jun-2012 22-Jul-2012 12-Aug-2012 31-Mar-2018 31-Mar-2018 P125961 TF-13093 Effective 15-Sep-2012 15-Sep-2012 15-Sep-2012 31-Mar-2018 31-Mar-2018 Cumulative Disbursements Restructuring History There has been no restructuring to date. Related Project(s) P149597-Additional finance for Afghanistan Rural Access Project ,P152294-Additional Financing of the Flood Distaster 11/18/2015 Page 10 of 10 Public Disclosure Copy