The Ministries of Planning & Development, Finance and the Banco de Mocambique conducted a semi-annual Country Portfolio Performance Review (CPPR) for World Bank-financed projects, during the week of March 10. The World Bank seeks to regularly monitor the portfolio with counterpart oversight and implementing agencies. In addition to this semi-annual review, a full annual review is organized once a year (the last one was held in September 2007). The March 2008 semi-annual review focused on four projects:
1. Market-led Small-holders Project (Ministry of Planning and Development)
2. Transfrontier Conservation Areas and Tourism Development (Ministry of Tourism)
3. Decentralized Planning and finance Project (Ministry of Planning and Development)
4. HIV / AIDS Response Project (CNCS)
The project reviews were helpful in raising key issues that may be affecting the progress of the project, as well as activities that are going well and drawing lessons for other projects. The meetings agreed on time-bound action plans for each of the projects, which will be monitored by the project coordinator and the World Bank task team leader, and MPD will also follow-up to ensure that the actions are taken.
The other purpose of the mini and full CPPR events is to update the "Traffic Light" portfolio monitoring table for all projects. This user-friendly presentation provides an overview of the status of the portfolio. It is encouraging to note that there has been some positive trends in the overall portfolio since the September review. In particular, the following projects have moved from either red (poor performance) or yellow (average progress), to green (good progress):
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Decentralized Planning and Financing (Ministry of Planning and Development); from yellow to green
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Energy Reform and Access (Ministry of Energy); from red to green
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Communications Sector Reform (Ministry of Transportation and Communication); from yellow to green
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Transfrontier Conservation Areas and Tourism Development (Ministry of Tourism); from yellow to green
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Higher Education (Ministry of Education); from yellow to green
It is worth highlighting two projects that attained all green marks during this rating period: National Water 2 (FIPAG and CRA) and Financial Sector Technical Assistance (Ministry of Finance).
Unfortunately, a few projects experienced worsening or continued weak performance including:
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Public Sector Reform Project (UTRESP)
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Maputo Municipal Development (Municipality of Maputo)
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Market-led Small-holders Project (Ministry of Planning and Development)
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HIV / AIDS Response Project (CNCS)
The quality of the portfolio, reflected by the number of actual problem projects, has a direct impact on the amount of resources available from the World Bank's IDA fund to Mozambique. Thus it is particularly important that the projects improve their performance to ensure that Mozambique can access as much IDA funding as possible, and also because of the need to achieve each project's development objective.
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