Perhaps their sensitivity analyses were closer to reality than the economic analysis? Mr Tuley felt sure Bank geographical desks had been told to find a number of RD projects for implementation.
11.
Mr Porter thought ODM analyses would concentrate on the most probable outcomes looking particularly at the effect on the ordinary farmer and assessing eg how much harder he would have to work and what changes in technique he must learn. The current analysis seemed to him to identify a technical possibility, estimate a high rate of return, propose an input package and hope it would all work out. He was afraid good projects with 5-6% rates of return would be unfairly and incorrectly turned down. Mr White contested this as far as prospective yields for this project were concerned, saying that they were based on 90% of the LRD package results. The LRD analysis of farm budgets by size of farm had provided a basis for the Bank analysis. Mr Lowe agreed adding the LRD package had been careful to introduce equipment ideas well known in Senegambia: the pilot project had taken these components already known in Gambia and pulled them together in target communities. This might be diluted in the main project but the pilot project experience, including using the concept of training instructors at village level, worked well and gave considerable leverage in promoting new intermediate techniques.
12.
The Chairman summarised the discussion by noting that there was some evidence of elasticity in Bank standards in appraising rural development projects and that on the evidence available this should be pointed out, with illustrations, to Mr Deare in Washington so that our Executive Director should be aware of our suspicions and know that we would be exercising particular vigilance. EPS would look critically at the more recent analyses available. In this Gambian case LRD's presence partly answered ODM's problem.
13.
Other points arising in discussion were:
i. The IBRD appraisal warned of an increasing load on the Ministry of Agriculture; asked if more Technical Cooperation would be needed, Mr White said that for the time being it was felt the problem was in reorganising existing staffing structures rather than increasing the Ministry's infrastructure. This would be helped by our provision of storage facilities and of purpose- built buildings to replace huts etc.
ii.
BADEA's capacity was as yet unproven but their willingness to increase their participation by taking over the Gambian Government's share of the project was welcomed.
iii. Paragraph 20 of the submission illustrated how a local cost policy to a recipient country could best work, each project being considered against an overall local cost percentage ceiling. This allowed full flexibility, even 100% local costs if warranted where much lower levels had been used in other projects from the same funding arrangement. It was noted that Treasury attempts to impose a local cost ceiling of 50% per project had been successfully opposed.
iv.
Estimated expenditure in 1977/78 was unfortunately high in a situation where that year was severely pressed under current public expenditure exercises but the department felt sure there would be some slippage from the quoted estimates.
v.
:
The Bank would mount six monthly missions and ODM would be represented not less than annually and quite possibly more frequently. It was not possible for the lightly staffed High Commission to help with the monitoring.
vi. This might make an interesting evaluation study, particularly with LRD involvement; the Bank/ODM arrangements could well be replicable elsewhere.
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