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GPOBA Quarterly Newsletter (June 2007)

Contributed by Fran Humber
Added: 13 June 2007

The GPOBA (Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid) has just published its June 2007 quarterly newsletter.

During March through June 2007, GPOBA has signed one (1) Grant Agreement, approved three (3) projects for commitment, and approved four (4) projects for eligibility. Details are further described below.

GPOBA Grant Agreements

Improved Rural Community Water in Andhra Pradesh

On May 16, 2007, a grant agreement in the amount of US$850,000 was signed for an OBA project in Andhra Pradesh, GPOBA’s first signing for a project in India as well as with an NGO – the Naandi Foundation. The project, in partnership with the Indian subsidiary of Water Health International (WHI), will assist in improving access to safe drinking water to poor rural communities in India. The grant is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation and the International Finance Corporation. The US$1.25 million project - which includes an important financial contribution from local communities themselves - envisages the creation of a Community Supply Water Scheme (CSWS) to provide clean water by using small scale ultra violet water purification plants in 25 villages throughout the Andhra Pradesh region benefiting over 75,000 people. Subsidy funding will be provided upon the independent verification of the operation of the plant, registration of households to the CSWS and three months of billed user fee consumption. For more information please contact Cledan Mandri-Perrott on cmandriperrott@...

Projects Approved for Commitment

The projects below have received a commitment* for GPOBA subsidy funding.

Decentralized Electricity for Universal Access in Bolivia

Bolivia confronts the most difficult poverty conditions in South America, particularly in rural areas. The population in the rural areas of Bolivia are by in large very poor and are extremely isolated. This project will provide affordable electricity access to over 9,000 poor Bolivian households, micro-enterprises schools and hospitals in remote and dispersed rural areas through solar home and pico-PV systems. Furthermore, the project will develop and consolidate a mechanism using innovative, output-based “medium-term service contractsâ€? (a new form of public-private partnerships) with decentralized, renewable technologies under Bolivia’s new Universal Access Policy. Building on an existing World Bank-funded project, GPOBA will provide subsidy funding, transaction support and capacity building. For more information, please contact Susan Bogach on sbogach@....

Lesotho New Hospital PPP

The project will assist in the design and implementation of a Public Private Partnership (PPP) for the replacement of the main public hospital in Lesotho. The project will serve the hospital’s catchment area, Maseru district, with a population of almost 500,000 people or one third of the country’s population. The new hospital is estimated to provide a significant increase in the quality, volume and scope of services for similar costs to that of the existing hospital. During the construction period, the project will also provide assistance to improve the filter clinics associated with the hospital, supporting the delivery of services of both facilities and delivering a higher level of service. Subsidies, aimed to expand the number and types of key services available, will be provided upon the successful delivery and quality of clinical services to patients. GPOBA support of the project will help to leverage government’s investment in public health infrastructure and the private sector’s management and operating expertise. For more information please contact or Carmen Nonay on cnonay@....

Improved Electricity Access for Indian Slum Dwellers

The proposed project is aimed at making new electricity connections as well as legalizing connections in selected slums in Mumbai. The project will improve electricity access, normalize services and improve the quality of life and economic opportunity in slum areas benefiting more than 27,000 households with safe new or regularized connections. The current pilot is part of a broader USAID energy sector assistance program for the country. By incorporating an OBA component, it will be possible to implement a much larger pilot program while also testing an OBA approach in the electric power sector in India. A key feature of the pilot project is the integrated approach of actively engaging the government, utilities and communities and, thus, addresses both supply- and demand-side issues. If successful, efforts would be made to disseminate the results and lessons learned in order to replicate and scale-up such approaches among distribution utilities working in slum areas across Mumbai and the country. For more information please contact Mustafa Zakir Hussain on mhussain2@....

  • Projects receiving GPOBA commitment have been approved for subsidy funding pending conditions precedent being met.

Projects Approved for Eligibility and/or Technical Assistance

These projects have been deemed eligible** for GPOBA subsidy funding and in some cases have received Technical Assistance.

Solar PV Systems to Increase Access to Electricity Services in Ghana

The objective of the proposed GPOBA project is to provide people living in rural areas of Ghana with access to electricity. This project attempts to do this by accelerating market development for solar photo voltaic systems by testing the dealer model as an off grid option for access expansion. The dealer model promotes free market entry and competition. At the end of the project, an increasing number of solar dealers entering into the market with the help of output-based subsidies is expected. This will enable over 15,000 households to receive electricity through various sizes of solar home systems at affordable prices. For more information, please contact Xiaodong Wang on xwang1@....

Ethiopia Electricity Access Rural Expansion Project II (EAREP II)

While an initiative consisting of several international donors, including IDA, AFDB and bilateral donors, has been successful in providing access to electricity in a large part of rural Ethiopia, the cost of connection is still a barrier for poor customers. The OBA scheme would help EEPCo, a state owned national utility, finance the cost of connection of poor customers or 286,000 households in rural areas. The proposed one-off subsidy would pay for: the financing costs to provide a 5 year loan to poor strata of the population who get connected to the electricity grid; and the delivery of two energy-efficient Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) per household, to promote energy conservation and help the customers reduce their electricity bills. For more information, please contact Luiz Maurer on lmaurer@....

Expanding Piped Water Supply to Surabaya’s Urban Poor

The OBA scheme in Surbaya, Indonesia aims to extend piped water connections to 15,500 low-income households. The proposed scheme supports three outputs: in-fill connections to existing mains, expansion connections to previously unserved areas, and bulk supply or “master meterâ€? connections for particularly poor, dense, or informal communities not otherwise eligible for individual connections. GPOBA funding will provide subsidies towards the unit connection costs, which will vary according to the type of connection being made. Funding will provide more reliable and cheaper water supply to poor households, reduce the time spent collecting water, and reduce the incidence of water-borne disease. For more information, please contact William Kingdom on wkingdom@....

Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project in Morocco

The Bank is providing financing to a rural water supply and sanitation project that is currently under implementation. The project supports the Government’s program to increase rural access to potable water supply and improve hygiene practices as well as to promote long-term sustainability of the rural water supply and sanitation sector. GPOBA is involved in funding an analysis of potential private sector involvement in rural schemes and an identification and design of specific opportunities for piloting OBA, including developing the institutional setup for implementing a pilot. The proposed pilot would benefit an estimated 8,100 households (about 52,000 people). For more information, please contact Wendy Wakeman on wwakeman@....

    • Projects receiving GPOBA eligibility have met GPOBA selection criteria and may in the future receive commitment pending results of project design and availability of funding.

NEWS FLASH!

GPOBA Program Council Meeting, Paris, France April 2007

GPOBA held a Program Council Meeting with donors, panel of experts and key GPOBA staff in Paris on April 19, 2007. Results delivered from GPOBA’s FY07 Indicative Annual Work Program (July 1, 2006-June 30, 2007), FY08 Indicative Annual Work Program, and GPOBA Business Strategy FY08-10 in addition to a overall project update were items discussed.

PIDG Meetings

Members of the Private Infrastructure Group met in the World Bank offices in Paris on April 17-18, 2007. GPOBA presented a progress report for November 2006 through March 2007.

Water Week 2007

GPOBA participated in the World Bank’s Water Week 2007 held in Washington on February 27 through March 1, 2007. The conference was entitled “Water Futures: Sustainability and Growthâ€?. GPOBA presented “Update and Lessons from OBA: Innovative Approaches for Reaching the Poorâ€? within the “Complex and Innovative Approachesâ€? theme, Presentations can be found at: http://go.worldbank.org/KWUPJQVOC0.

Workshop – Can Output-Based Aid Help Reduce the Impact of Corruption?

A workshop on OBA and corruption, organized by the World Bank in conjunction with GPOBA, was held at the World Bank on May 2, 2007. A GPOBA paper on this topic is forthcoming.

GPOBA Publications

Output-Based Aid in Bolivia: Balanced Tender Design for Sustainable Energy Access in Difficult Markets (March 2007)

Bolivia is implementing an IBRD-funded innovative public-private approach to increase rural electricity access to extremely remote areas via Solar Home Systems (SHS). Novel Medium-term Service Contracts (MSCs) balance the Government’s wish for sustainable service and maximum control with providers’ aim for minimal risk exposure. In 2005, 14 MSCs were successfully bid out to private service providers to minimize the subsidies paid against an ambitious set of provider obligations. The tender resulted in a 25-percent gain in number of new users. Although private participation in Bolivian infrastructure declined sharply in 2006, the SHS service model enjoys continued support by government and private providers alike.

Read more: http://www.gpoba.org/docs/OBApproaches12_Bolivia.pdf

Output-based Aid in Health: The Argentine Maternal-Child Health Insurance Program (March 2007)

To fight infant mortality in the poorest provinces of Argentina, local authorities and the World Bank set up the Maternal-Child Health Insurance Program in 2004. The program is administered by provincial governments, which receive funding on the basis of the numbers of mothers and children enrolled and the performance on results-based “tracersâ€?–sets of indicators measuring service delivery and quality. The services are provided by existing health care facilities, which receive a standard payment per patient and per service provided. The health care facilities compete on the basis of quality.

Read more: http://www.gpoba.org/docs/OBApproaches13_ArgentinaHealth.pdf

OBA in Senegal – Designing Technology-Neutral Concessions for Rural Electrification (March 2007)

Nationwide, only 30 percent of households in Senegal have access to electricity. Rural electrification is even lower at 12.5 percent of households, and limited to areas around large population centers and some tertiary centers. Once connected, most rural households would likely be willing and able to pay for their electricity use: most already spend $2–24 per month on kerosene and dry cell batteries to meet their lighting and small power needs. But the up-front investment and connection costs are out of reach for the typical household. The government has made rural electrification a priority, recognizing its importance in reducing poverty and redressing development imbalances. Early efforts achieved limited results. A new program that combines output-based aid (OBA) subsidies with technology neutral competitive bidding is seen as more promising. This program has the potential to align private incentives with public sector objectives of maximizing the number of rural households served under a sustainable commercial scheme.

Read more: http://www.gpoba.org/docs/OBApproaches14_SenegalElectric.pdf

Output-based Aid in Uganda: Bringing Communication Services to Rural Areas (March 2007)

In 1999, Uganda had achieved a national teledensity (fixed and mobile) of about one telephone per 100 inhabitants, slightly above the average for Sub- Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa). But with most phone lines concentrated in the Kampala area, rural teledensity was far lower. Indeed, only 380 of the 920 subcounties in Uganda were expected to have any kind of telephone service by 2001. Internet services, still in their infancy, also were limited to Kampala. In the planning stages around that time, a new World Bank project was designed in part to address this situation. The Energy for Rural Transformation Project was aimed at creating an environment conducive to commercially oriented, sustainable delivery of both renewable energy and information and communication technology (ICT) services in rural areas.

Read more: http://www.gpoba.org/docs/OBApproaches15_UgandaTelecom.pdf

Read other GPOBA Publications here: http://www.gpoba.org/publications/index.asp
Categories: GPOBA



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