Concept Note

1. Concept Note
IFAD-Kingdom of Cambodia
Country Portfolio Review and COSOP Midterm Review Workshop
Phnom Penh, 21st
April 2016
A. Background
1. An Annual Country Portfolio Review (ACPoR) for the Kingdom of Cambodia is
annually held with the participation of the IFAD Assisted Projects (Loans and Grants) and the
Lead and Implementing Agencies and Partners. The ACPoR is a platform for the IFAD
assisted programmes/projects in the country to review status, share experiences good
practices and identify major policy and operational constraints, emerging from the
implementation of the country programme and agree on concrete actions to improve the
performance of individual programmes/projects and the overall country programmes.
2. As per interest of all stakeholders in the country and at IFAD, this event will consider
as well the participative midterm review of the ongoing COSOP1
, including reflections on
projects coordination towards the sharing of resources among projects, the coherence
between targeting, the inclusion of new dimensions such as Climate Change Adaptation,
Nutrition and Innovation of Extensions Services, strategies for building a strong and common
M&E system for all programmes and the overall progress in achievement its Goal.
B. The IFAD Country Programme Strategic Framework
3. Cambodia has made great progress since 2007. Strong economic growth has benefited
not only the urban areas but also the rural poor: poverty rate in rural areas according to the
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A Results-Based Country Strategic Opportunities Programme or COSOP is a framework for making strategic
choices about IFAD operations in a country, identifying opportunities for IFAD financing, and for facilitating
management for results. The central objective of a COSOP is to ensure that IFAD country operations produce a
positive impact on poverty. The document reviews the specific rural poverty situation as the basis for
determining geographic sites and related thematic areas where IFAD would operate and highlights the
innovation it intends to promote in the country programme. The COSOP discusses policy and institutional
aspects that affect the outcome of IFAD operations and their impact on the poor including, inter alia, local
governance and the participation/empowerment of the poor as main determinants of an enabling
environment for the success of pro-poor projects. The COSOP also includes an overview of IFAD's previous
operations and the lessons learned, particularly from evaluation studies, and integrates these lessons into
future operational directions. To ensure strong country ownership, the COSOP design and implementation
process is characterized by wide stakeholder consultation. It is also designed to be aligned with the country's
poverty reduction strategy and planning framework. It clearly indicates potential strategic partners among
multilateral and bilateral donors, taking into account the comparative advantage of each. Source: IFAD
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2. latest data has declined from 58 percent in 2007 to 23.7 percent in 2011 and food poverty rate
from 18 percent to 4.4 percent in the same period. The country’s economy has been
diversifying and this has created employment opportunities beyond agriculture. Still
agriculture will continue to play a key role in fighting poverty in the next 6 years. The rapid
transformation of rural areas and agriculture which further accelerated after the 2008 food
price crisis, and the growing risks associated with climate variability and change create new
challenges and opportunities that make part of the ongoing COSOP, that covers the period
2013- 2018.
4. The agricultural sector is not the unique solution to future growth and rural poverty
challenges but it will remain an important part of the solution in Cambodia in this decade.
Strengthening links to product markets is the key to unlocking the potential of agriculture in
Cambodia for economic growth, employment and poverty reduction. Cambodia‘s location
between the large economies of Thailand and Vietnam provides huge opportunities for
market integration, but Cambodian farmers will need to adapt to the challenge of increased
competition in more volatile natural and economic environments.
5. From a development investment perspective, the central role market-oriented
agriculture will play in future growth combined with the diversity of farmers and market
chains have a material effect on which development strategies and interventions are likely to
work in different locations and markets to the benefit of different groups of farmers. This
creates very real practical problems for development initiatives in coping with these localized
variations while maintaining sufficient scale in terms of the number of households reached.
6. Lessons learned from the IFAD portfolio and through the extensive COSOP
preparation process indicate, among other, that:
− The importance of M&E for improved programme implementation and scaling up
cannot be over-emphasized;
− There is need for greater focus on performance-based management and
implementation;
− There is scope for combining public sector capacity development with an enabling
environment for a broad range of service providers;
− RGC‘s leadership in the development of the rice sector provides a valuable
demonstration of the merits of a comprehensive and evidence-based, sector specific
policy and action plan;
− Increasing exposure of smallholder farmers to climate change and other shocks
requires enhanced attention to building resilience at several levels
7. The current COSOP follows some key guiding principles in line with the changing
socio-economic and RGC policy context: (i) accelerating the transition to farming as a
business; (ii) more systematic and broad-based scouting, testing and scaling up of
innovations; (iii) greater attention being paid to vulnerability to shocks (including climate-
related) and to building resilience at multiple levels; and (iv) building local leadership
capabilities.
8. As a result, the COSOP 2013-2018 marks a triple transition in programme strategic
thrusts for IFAD, namely (i) from a livelihoods approach to enabling poor farmers to access
market opportunities; (ii) from rice intensification and agricultural productivity to
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3. commercialization, diversification and resilience; and (iii) from promoting decentralization of
government structures in the framework of area-based projects to developing public-private
service delivery mechanisms within a more programmatic approach. A US$15 million grant
has been allocated from IFAD‘s Adaptation to Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP)
to ensure that the proposed transition explicitly factors in climate variability and change.
Thus, the 2013-2018 COSOP has the following three Strategic Objectives (SO):
1. SO1: Poor smallholders enabled to take advantage of market opportunities;
2. SO2: Poor rural households and communities increase resilience to climate change
and other shocks;
3. SO3: Poor rural households gain better access to strengthened rural service
delivery by Government, civil society and private sector agencies.
9. Currently, IFAD, in cooperation with the Kingdom of Cambodia, is conducting a
Mid-Term Review of the current COSOP (2013-2018) with participation of all stakeholders.
The MTR aims to ensure the continuing relevance of the COSOP target results and strategies
as well as to strengthen ownership and efficiency. More limited reviews of the COSOP are
conducted annually so that the COSOP is a living document, capable of adapting to the
country dynamics and supporting its development strategy.
B. IFAD Assisted Projects in the Kingdom of Cambodia
10. Cambodia became a member of IFAD in 1992 and IFAD’s first intervention took the
form of an extended cooperation grant of US$75,000 which aimed to assist poor families to
improve livestock production. In 1996, IFAD extended its first loan to the Royal Government
of Cambodia to finance the Agriculture Productivity Improvement Project (APIP), whose
objective was to strengthen the country’s agricultural sector. Starting in 1998, IFAD’s
interventions in Cambodia integrated closely with the government’s Seila Programme for
poverty alleviation whose main focus was decentralization and rural development. This
resulted in a series of projects beginning with the Agriculture Development Support to Seila
(ADESS).
11. Since its first loan in 1996, IFAD has invested US$125.3 million in eight rural
development projects in Cambodia for a total of US$283.7 million, benefiting 1,245,300
households. This represents approximately half of all farm households in Cambodia.
12. There are three ongoing operations of IFAD within the framework of the COSOP
2013-18:
a. Tonle Sap Poverty Reduction and Smallholder Development Project (TSSD);
b. Project for Agricultural Development and Economic Empowerment (PADEE)
c. Agricultural Services Prograrmme for Innovation, Resilience and Extension
(ASPIRE).
13. (ASPIRE) Programme, which started in 2015, represents an IFAD investment of
US$41.0 million and will reach 100,000 poor farm households. All IFAD investments are
designed to follow the objectives defined within the Country Strategic Opportunities
Programme (COSOP) — a document produced in consultation with the Royal Government of
Cambodia and its development partners whose overarching objective is to support the
Government’s poverty reduction strategy.
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4. 14. There are two further projects in preparation: Building Adaptive Capacity through the
Scaling-up of Renewable Energy Technologies in Rural Cambodia (S-RET) which will
commence operations in mid-2016, and Accelerating Inclusive Markets for Smallholders
(AIMS) which is expected to begin in 2017.
15. Given the high dependence on local weather for the livelihoods of Cambodia’s poor
farmers and their vulnerability to sudden changes in climate, IFAD is increasingly working to
strengthen Cambodian’s resilience to climate change, in particular in rural areas. IFAD works
with the poorest people and communities in the provinces with the highest rates of poverty.
These include landless people as well as farmers with very limited off-farm income
generating opportunities and who are extremely vulnerable to market shocks, climate
disasters or unexpected household expenses such as healthcare bills.
D. Annual Country Portfolio Review
16. The ACPoR will focus on the following subject areas:
a) Review of Project Performance and Country Programme and the attainment of the
COSOP strategic objectives and contribution to achieving the intended results of the
COSOP;
b) Resolving Bottlenecks that Impede Enhancement of Project Management and
Implementation, aimed at producing Actions Plans to improve Portfolio Performance;
c) M&E, MIS, KM and KS best practices that will open the space to all stakeholders to
share lessons learnt in the areas on finance management/procurement, knowledge
management/knowledge issues and others according to the participants´ interests.
E. Annual Country Portfolio Review
17. The proposed objectives are:
a. Objective 1: To review the Country Portfolio of the Kingdom of Cambodia.
b. Objective 2: To identify key problems and solutions, and to find responsive remedies
for the bottleneck issues in project management.
c. Objective 3: To review the draft findings of the Mid-Term Review of the COSOP
(2013-18) including validation of key findings and outline action plan for
implementing recommendations.
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