CRP concludes its monitoring of the Pakistan Chashma Right Bank Irrigation Project
(Stage III)

The Project was originally investigated by the Board Inspection Committee under the previous Inspection Function, which was replaced by the ADB Accountability Mechanism in 2003. In August 2004, ADB's Board of Directors approved the monitoring by the Compliance Review Panel of the implementation of the remedial actions to bring the Project back into compliance. After five years of monitoring, the Panel concluded that ADB complied with 24 of the original 29 recommendations and partially complied with four recommendations, while one recommendation had already been superseded by events. Of the four recommendations where ADB had achieved partial compliance, the Panel concluded that sufficient progress is being made and that, in the circumstances, there is no need for the Panel to extend its monitoring mandate beyond the standard five-year period. Therefore, the Panel has concluded the monitoring of the Board-approved remedial actions for the Project and released its fifth and final annual monitoring report, which was circulated to the Board on 17 June 2010.

The is the first time under ADB's accountability policy that the Panel has completed a full, five-year monitoring mandate; therefore, the report includes lessons learned from the last five years of monitoring. These lessons are briefly summarized below.

• that the most effective approach to compliance is to address environmental and social safeguards issues at the earliest stage of the project cycle;
• that the Panel should limit so-called "general recommendations", which should be directly related to improving compliance and accountability rather than attempting to deal with standard project administration rules and procedures;
• that the Panel's project-specific recommendations should distinguish those that are directly related to policy compliance and those that are essentially about project administration;
• that the lack of access to the project site, for any reason, and the early disengagement of requesters may affect the depth of monitoring that can be undertaken by the Panel;
• that implementation of remedial works will almost certainly have cost implications for any borrower, and the Board may want to consider this consequence as part of the review of the Accountability Mechanism; and
• that the support and cooperation from ADB's operations staff, as well as the borrower and project executing and implementing agencies, are essential and contribute to the success of the remedial works and the Panel's monitoring activities.

The final annual monitoring report of the Panel is now available online at www.compliance.adb.org

» See ADB news release

» See Knowledge Showcase - "Chasma: A Case Study in Compliance"