 Kazan is an ancient city in the Russian Federation, located approximately 800 km east of Moscow. It is the capital of Tatarstan and Russia’s eighth largest city. Today, Kazan is an important industrial and educational center with a population of 1.2 million. The World Bank financed the Kazan Municipal Development Loan (KMDL) to help build up the autonomous municipal administration that had been newly created even though the city itself was ancient. The Loan was an instrument through which the World Bank supported the Kazan government’s reform program. The objectives of KMDL were to: (i) improve Kazan’s financial management, (ii) deliver social services better, and (iii) improve the condition of local housing and communal services. The design of this programmatic sector loan was very simple, but was based on a deep understanding of Kazan’s complex institutional context. According to the Project Performance Assessment Review carried out by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), all three project objectives were achieved, two highly so and one substantially, an unusually strong result. Among its achievements, KMDL boasts excellent results in designing and implementing a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. The M&E design included clear and easy-to-measure indicators that were well conceived and addressed all project objectives . One of the lessons learned was that designing simple and easy M&E was motivated by the municipality of Kazan’s wish use the data it generated for its own financial management purposes. For instance, the municipality accelerated social assistance payments when monitoring showed progress to be slipping in the earliest months of the project. M&E required tight controls, auditing, and reporting to ensure proper use of funds. In general, as KMDL was part of the government’s reform program, its progress and performance was closely monitored on many levels. At the city level, a working group headed by the city vice mayor in charge of the economy played a critical role in monitoring progress and coordinating the work of different municipal agencies at the Tatarstan Republic. At the level of the republic, the President of Tatarstan was regularly briefed about the program’s progress and was involved in certain critical decisions at various stages. Additionally, the republic’s Prime Minister closely monitored the program implementation and personally joined discussions to determine when corrective action or additional resources were needed to meet program goals. Therefore, M&E tracked multiple performance indicators, including the following: - Municipal budget deficit as a share of all revenues (it declined)
- Short-term payables (these fell)
- Cash payments to eligible recipients for social assistance (these expanded)
- Private sector coverage of housing and communal services maintenance (this broadened)
All of these indicators were thoroughly monitored on a monthly basis by local teams, as were indicators measuring outputs, such as progress in completing an audit or publishing a report As a result of the successful project implementation, Kazan municipality increased its own revenues, turned its large budget deficit into a small surplus, improved the maintenance of housing areas and infrastructure, and enhanced its asset management. The lessons learned from KMDL were: - Having an M&E system is important for gathering data and monitoring performance
- M&E design should be simple and clear, and include easy-to-measure indicators
- Involvement of the municipalities in the M&E design should be ensured from the outset
- Close monitoring and performance measurement are important factors in a project’s success.
Disclaimer: Please note that content for this case was taken from the Improving Municipal Management for Cities to Succeed report; Project Performance Assessment Review of Kazan Municipal Development Loan (KMDL); and Implementation Completion and Results Report on a Loan to Russian Federation to KMDL. |
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