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Bangladesh: Scaling Up Note
Bangladesh: Scaling Up Note
Scaling up note
©IFAD/GMB Akashi
Bangladesh - Microfinance for Marginal and
Small Farmers Project
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(13 per cent), including agricultural and seasonal loans and technical support; and (iii) agriculture,
aquaculture and livestock development activities (17 per cent).
The Government of Bangladesh and IFAD’s Independent Office of Evaluation have rated the relevance of
the IFAD country programme as satisfactory and well in line with (i) government/beneficiary demand;
(ii) Bangladesh’s Vision 2021 and its goal to become an upper-middle-income country; and (iii) the different
ongoing national policies and regulations.
As agreed and negotiated through the 2012-2018 COSOP objectives, IFAD will pursue its commitment to
support the government with its lending and non-lending instruments in three key areas: (i) resilience to
climate change; (ii) market access and value chain development; and (iii) economically and socially
sustainable empowerment of marginalized groups.
The IFAD PBAS allocation for Bangladesh was US$45 million for the 2004-2006 cycle, while for the
2013-2015 cycle, it had increased to US$108 million.
Box 1. Labour contracting societies: generating employment and income for communities in
Bangladesh
A labour contracting society (LCS) is a group of adults (both women and men) of similar socio-economic status
and skills level, usually landless labourers or members of sharecropper households, who are dependent on
manual labour as their main source of income. The number of members in an LCS depends on the volume and
type of works to be completed, the experience of the labourers, local supervision capacity (of the upazila
[subdistrict] engineer’s office) and the time frame for the works to be done. The members of the LCS are trained
in basic, often labour-intensive, techniques.
Under IFAD-supported projects, construction contracts are awarded to LCSs rather than traditional
contractors, so that members can earn a daily wage as construction workers. Once the works have been
completed, LCS members receive and share a percentage of the profits related to the construction
contract. The LCS approach has two primary advantages: (i) the whole community, in addition to the
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members of the LCS, benefits from the improved infrastructure and a greater sense of ownership; and
(ii) employment is created for the LCS members, who would otherwise be unemployed or have a very low
income. LCS members may also receive additional training in income-generating activities (keeping
vegetable plots, rearing ducklings, paravet training, etc.) so they can invest their profits in their own rural
enterprises or adopt agricultural technologies provided by the projects. This increases self-reliance and
ultimately can lead to sustainable self-employment.
Financial services for small/marginal farmers. In order to address the issue of access to agricultural
credit, IFAD and PKSF, in consultation with communities and the government, identified the existing
problems and piloted new lending products for small-scale agriculture through PKSF’s partner
organizations (POs). At the time, this was an innovative move because although microcredit was highly
developed by many institutions in Bangladesh, including the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee
(BRAC) and PKSF, there were very few cases of small farmers being provided with credit for
agricultural purposes.
Through the Microfinance for Marginal and Small Farmers Project (MFMSFP), IFAD provided funds and
technical assistance to test two new financial products: (i) seasonal loans, and (ii) agricultural microcredit.
Thanks to IFAD's global experience in rural finance and to the Ministry of Finance and PKSF’s national
expertise, monitoring and analysis was started in a pilot organized with 35 POs. Under MFMSFP,
200,000 marginal and small farmers in Bangladesh benefited from access to vital agricultural financial
services. Given the success of the pilot, these two agricultural financial products were mainstreamed into
PKSF’s core programme and are now provided by 236 POs across the country.
These two innovative financial instruments have proved to be sustainable, with a 98 per cent loan recovery
rate that allows PKSF and its POs to leverage much larger sums than the initial investments. The
introduction of these instruments translated into a 50 per cent increase in sales of rice and vegetables by
beneficiaries and increases of 21-45 per cent in net income, as assessed by an external evaluation. The
two financial products were not only rapidly adopted by all POs but were also established as regular
products of PKSF-supported institutions, backed by an Agriculture Unit and a Livestock Unit set up within
PKSF itself. Today, these two products represent 40 per cent of PKSF’s overall lending activities, which for
2014-2015 amounted to around US$200 million.
Given the success of the pilot and the continuing demand from small and marginalized farmers, PKSF was
able to convince other financial partners (both multilateral and bilateral) to come on board, thus leveraging
sufficient additional finance to ensure this scaling-up exercise had a strong impact.
The United States Department of the Treasury selected this IFAD-supported project Microfinance for
Marginal and Small Farmers Project as the winner of its Development Impact Honors Award 2014.
Community resource management. In the Haor area of north-east Bangladesh, rural areas are under
floodwater for six months of the year as a result of the monsoon season in the Himalayas and the natural
water draining system. During the dry season, fish that have gathered during the flood period become
concentrated in the remaining body of water in the beels, thus representing an important local financial
resource. Traditionally, wealthy local individuals would buy exclusive fishing rights for the entire dry season
through a bidding system, which excluded the local community from accessing their natural local
resources, even to feed themselves.
Faced with this situation, a pilot was set up under the Sunamganj Community-based Resource
Management Project (SCBRMP) with IFAD financial and technical support. The objective was to organize
communities so that they would be able to manage their own beels themselves. Beel User Groups
(BUGs) groups of fishers, both women and men, living in communities around large inland water
bodies were organized, trained and supported in order to: (i) manage their fish resources in a sustainable
way; and (ii) ensure they had official and legal recognition of their right to exploit the beels under long-term
leases issued by the Ministry of Land. Tested successfully in a few beels, this approach has been
replicated and scaled up by other IFAD-supported projects and is now applied to more than 400 beels,
corresponding to more than 10,000 households.
With support from WorldFish in the monitoring and analysis of fish production, SCBRMP has shown how
transferring these natural resources to local communities can greatly improve the quality and productivity of
culture fisheries (small-scale aquaculture ponds) and inland capture fisheries (open water fisheries in beels
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and haors). It has also shown how this can lead to the generation of significant income for these
community-based associations.
To complement the work done, an IFAD grant provided to WorldFish focused on improving the
understanding of links between fisheries and nutrition. Through the introduction of small, nutrient-dense fish
species (particularly mola), highly efficient, diverse polyculture systems also including high-value fish
were developed. The initiative demonstrated the potential not only for improving livelihoods small-fish
productivity in the project’s ponds increased from less than 1 ton/hectare to more than 3 tons/hectare but
also for significantly improving the nutrition of poor families, who were now able to afford the small fish.
This can be considered an example of functional scaling up, which has also significantly broadened the
knowledge base for improving the lives of poor rural people through better nutrition. The linkage with other
projects in Sunamganj and north-west Bangladesh provided a receptive environment for the introduction of
the small fish.
Today, these different approaches (developing sustainable BUGs, issuing long-term leases to BUGs,
developing polyculture systems) have been capitalized, disseminated at the national level and replicated
through LGED or IFAD-supported projects such as HILIP/CALIP. In collaboration with LGED and the local
government division of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, IFAD is
now supporting efforts to mainstream the BUG and small-fish approaches into the policies of the Ministry of
Land and the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.
Although this has been a difficult process providing support to open water inland fisheries for more than
24 years increasing the confidence and power of grass-roots community organizations has made a clear
contribution to securing their sustainable development. One of the key objectives of HILIP/CALIP is now to
support the finalization of changes expected in the text regulating the beels. In parallel, IFAD will continue
to support LGED (with partners) to ensure more systematic development of BUGs, which, together, will
have more weight at the national level in decisions taken on the attribution of beels.
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IFAD, together with its partners, is embarking on a review of current pro-poor policies in Bangladesh.
Based on lessons learned and the potential for improvement, a scaling-up strategy will be discussed and
defined, with key steps and resources being mapped out before implementation during the next three
years. Input from both the IFAD country office (country programme manager/country programme officer)
and implementing agencies/partners is crucial in pushing the policy agenda from different angles. PKSF,
LGED and the Bangladesh Water Development Board have direct access to the Ministry of Finance, the
Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, and the Ministry of Water Resources;
through various activities they also have daily interaction with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of
Fisheries and Livestock, and the Ministry of Land, where they continuously convey policy messages
promoted by IFAD interventions.
Our work with other partners, such as ADB, the World Bank and sister United Nations organizations, is also
important in strengthening the influence of IFAD policy messages.
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possible by a series of factors relating to: (i) the political space; (ii) the financial space; (iii) partnerships;
and (iv) the institutional space.
Political space. First and foremost, the political space has been crucial in enabling the scaling-up agenda.
The government has very clear development and economic strategies, which are guided by its Vision 2021.
Other strategic documents, such as the current Sixth Five-Year Plan and the upcoming Seventh Five-Year
Plan, also provide clear results-based targets. The development agenda is a top priority for the
government, which facilitates the process of scaling up innovations, as the country strives to research,
develop and deliver new and more effective approaches and to continue building on the momentum in
order to reach its target of becoming a higher-middle-income country within the next few years. The BUG
approach, for example, which was first used by SCBRMP, would have encountered insurmountable
obstacles without the support from LGED and the Ministry of Land.
Political guidance such as this is invaluable when projects are being designed because – by defining the
government’s priorities – it provides a framework for identifying which practices are most likely to be scaled
up successfully. But in Bangladesh the political engagement does not limit itself to identifying scaling-up
priorities, fostering innovations through results-based management or developing laws and policies to
include lessons learned from development experiences; it also spills over into the financial space because
the government is an important and active investor in projects.
Financial space. In Bangladesh, financial space has been a major facilitating factor in scaling up
innovations. IFAD investments alone (described above in “Key elements of IFAD’s country programme”)
are not sufficient to ensure the scaling up of successful approaches. In fact, the adoption and expansion of
seasonal loans would not have been possible without the important financial investments made by PKSF
and its network of POs. Similarly, the government is an important investor in IFAD-supported projects, as
its US$366 million counterpart contribution shows. Another important aspect of the financial space relates
to leveraging funds from cofinanciers in order to promote the adoption of innovations across the spectrum
of donor-aided projects. In this context, the contribution of cofinanciers such as ADB, DANIDA, KfW,
Netherlands, NORAD, Spain, USAID and the World Bank has been crucial, and also highlights the
importance of solid partnerships in successfully scaling up.
Partnerships. Another fundamental part of the scaling-up process is solid partnerships. Partnerships with
other donors and development agencies have helped IFAD leverage investments through cofinanciers, and
have allowed the scaling up of successful approaches such as the LCS in CCRIP, which is cofinanced with
ADB and KfW, and agricultural technologies under NATP, cofinanced with the World Bank.
Partnerships, however, do not relate only to the financial space. Solid partnerships with other development
actors NGOs, other United Nations agencies (e.g. United Nations Development Programme, Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Food Programme), government line departments
(e.g. Department of Agricultural Extension, Agriculture Information Service) and research centres
(e.g. WorldFish) have greatly facilitated the flow of knowledge and information. They have also
contributed to identifying which approaches and technologies have been successful. For example, the
monitoring and research work undertaken by WorldFish for SCBRMP and HILIP on the impact of the BUG
approach on fish productivity and biodiversity is proving to be essential in securing the adoption of this
approach by the Ministry of Land. One of the most important types of partnership for ensuring the success
of the scaling-up model is that with strong implementing agencies, which can also be linked to the
institutional space.
Institutional space. Possibly the most crucial factor in the entire scaling-up process is institutional space.
Strong implementation agencies such as PKSF and LGED have been the foundation of the successes
described throughout this note. The commitment and the capacity of their staff implementing the projects
on the ground remain critical in ensuring that activities are properly rolled out and ultimately achieve the
expected outputs. In addition, these agencies must be able to correctly study, monitor and evaluate their
activities in order to ensure successful implementation. They must also be able to provide accurate and
reliable data and knowledge that will then be used to support the scaling up of activities. Ultimately, strong
institutions are necessary to bring all the other factors together: political will, important funding and strong
partnerships will only contribute to the scaling-up process if the implementing agencies have the capacity to
deliver the outputs designed by projects.
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Monitoring and evaluation
The efficiency of the M&E system is considered satisfactory. According to the recent Bangladesh country
programme evaluation, the average performance (evaluated as a project status report score) of M&E of
Bangladesh projects supervised by IFAD is better than the regional average. IFAD provides direct
supervision and implementation support to projects, whereas projects monitor impacts through IFAD’s
Result and Impact Management System (RIMS), including a baseline survey, a mid-term survey and a final
follow-up survey.
In Bangladesh, most of the projects have decentralized M&E by putting in place a bottom-up reporting
system from union to upazila, district and then project management unit (PMU) level. Quality control and
regular field visits are conducted by M&E staff from the PMU in order to provide a basis for analysing
progress towards intended results, identifying problems and reporting to IFAD.
Comprehensive M&E arrangements were put in place in the Market Infrastructure Development Project in
Charland Regions (MIDPCR) project, where an independent M&E unit was established within the PMU,
headed by an M&E specialist, with a field monitoring officer and two computer operators based in project
districts. The project carried out a series of baseline and impact studies in 2009-2010, including: a number
of case studies; an impact assessment of the improved market connecting roads and ghats; impact studies
on fish, vegetable and poultry subsectors; and two knowledge, attitude, practice (KAP) surveys to assess
the effectiveness of training in homestead vegetable cultivation and beef fattening.
Systematic M&E during implementation, together with good knowledge management, can demonstrate and
disseminate successful innovation, good practices and lessons learned from what could have been done
better. Therefore, IFAD will continue to provide implementation support to build effective M&E systems.
Originator
Hubert Boirard
Country Programme Manager
Asia and the Pacific Region
[email protected]
Contact
Maria-Elena Mangiafico
Knowledge Management and Grants Officer
Policy and Technical Advisory Division
E-mail: [email protected]
December 2015