Water Efficiency Improvement in Drought Affected Provinces, Viet Nam (TA 9147-VIE)

Name of Client:
Asian Development Bank (ADB)

Country:
Viet Nam

Length of Consultancy Assignment:
Start Date: 14 November 2016
Completion Date: 30 November 2017

Detailed Narrative Description of Project:

This TA prepared the design of an investment project, which aimed to improve agriculture water productivity (crop per drop) by increasing water use efficiency in irrigated agriculture in five drought affected provinces in the central highland and south central coastal regions. The ensuing project will involve modernizing eight irrigation schemes or subprojects) commanding about 33,500 ha in Binh Thuan, Dak Lak, Dak Nong, Khanh Hoa, and Ninh Thuan provinces, which are mainly open canal gravity schemes that are highly vulnerable to drought. The project will have the following outcome: climate-resilient and modernized irrigation systems providing flexible and affordable services to beneficiary farmers in five climate-vulnerable provinces. It will have three outputs: (i) climate-resilient irrigation services adopted; (ii) flexible and modernized irrigation systems constructed; and (iii) efficient on-farm water management practices adopted. System modernization will increase the level of irrigation service, making water available with greater reliability (nearly on-demand), enabling farmers to adopt a longer-term land-use planning perspective (diversification into HVCs). Features of the modernized systems include: (i) piped distribution systems (wherever possible), providing direct farmer access of their agricultural landholdings; (ii) introduction of controls to better manage the distribution of water throughout the system; and (iii) installation of hydrants and direct offtake so that farmers can connect directly to the irrigation distribution system (sometimes with sufficient residual head to drive sprinklers, removing the need to re-pressurize for on-farm distribution and application). The modernized systems will reduce the need for complicated operation and maintenance (O&M) arrangements, reduce conveyance losses and improve water productivity in the climate-vulnerable environment, and pave the way for rationalized decision making on priority water distribution during times of shortage.


PRIMEX, as the lead firm, managed PPTA implementation, ensuring the high quality and timely of the outputs, and supported the ADB Team Leader in the preparation of the loan processing documents for approval by ADB and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Viet Nam. The PPTA team conducted the following assessments: (i) technical assessment, which involved the assessment of appropriate water-saving technologies for water delivery and on-farm systems, and integrating these with CCA/resilience measures, as appropriate, into the concept designs of the eight subprojects; (ii) economic and financial assessment of the proposed project in line with ADB’s Guidelines for Economic Analysis of Projects (1997), Key Areas of Economic Analysis of Projects–An Overview (2003), and ADB’s Financial Management and Analysis of Projects (2005); (iii) governance assessment or an examination of relevant public financial management capacity (particularly for O&M), procurement, anticorruption measures, policy and legal concerns of national and provincial government institutions, and preparation of a procurement plan based on a prior procurement capacity and risk assessment; (iv) poverty and social assessment or analysis of the poverty, social, and gender aspects of the proposed project to provide the basis for the preparation of a gender action plan (GAP) and a consultation and participation (C&P) framework; and (v) safeguards assessment or the identification and analysis of involuntary resettlement (IR), indigenous people (IP), and environmental issues, including climate and disaster risks, following government regulations and procedures and in full compliance with ADB’s Safeguard Policy Statement (SPS) (2009). The Team also prepared inception, midterm, draft final, and final TA reports and drafted the Report and Recommendations of the President (RRP), linked documents including the Project Administration Manual (PAM), and supplementary documents.

PRIMEX provided the services of eight international specialists: a Team Leader/Irrigation Institutional Specialist, an Irrigation Engineer, an Agronomist, an Environment Specialist, a Poverty and Social Impact Assessment; a Procurement and Start-up Specialist, and a Finance Specialist.