ISLAMABAD, Aug 14: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a special evaluation on Pakistan’s 60th independence anniversary describes it as a country with “poor governance, endemic corruption and social indicators that are among the worst in Asia”.

In the first evaluation report in 22 years ‘Learning Curves: What role for ADB in Pakistan?’, the bank says that ‘Pakistan has provided a challenging context in which to implement a programme of development assistance’, although it was a major client of the bank.

Wars and cross-border conflicts with its neighbours, strong ethnic and cultural divisions, continued existence of feudal social relations in some parts and a complex structure of government comprising federal, provincial, district, tehsil or taluka and union levels, each with an elected body since 2002 have marked Pakistan’s modern history.

The bank plans to reduce the number of sectors and sub-sectors in which it is involved on the basis of a detailed Country Assistance Programme Evaluation (CAPE). This restructuring, however, is not because the country did not fare well but for the reason that ADB’s public sector loan portfolio was unfocused and its staff overburdened.

The Asian Bank says that three periods of military rules, 10 changes in the leadership of civilian governments during 1988-1999, erratic economic growth, with periods of faster growth neither sustained nor translated into better social outcomes, rising poverty rates throughout the 1990s were important developments in Pakistan over the years.

The report said the ADB’s performance in none of the ten sectors was rated ‘highly successful’ while the programmes in health, nutrition and social protection, water supply, sanitation and waste management were rated ‘unsuccessful’.

Only two sectors -- energy and transport -- were rated as ‘successful’ and in agriculture and natural resources, education, finance, law, economic management and public policy the performance was ranked ‘partly successful’.

The evaluation concluded that the ADB has too many loans in too many sectors and sub-sectors, given staff and technical resources and the requirement of its business processes.

The study recommended that in the absence of a major increase in the number assigned to support operation in Pakistan, the bank should reduce the number of sectors and sub-sectors it is involved in. An appropriate scenario would be four core lending and two core non-lending sectors with a more focused approach and hence the number of active public sector projects in the portfolio should be reduced.

The bank would consider a new approach towards preparation of a new country partnership strategy with key elements of sector prioritisation, pro-poor approaches, private sector operations, capacity building, delegation of authority, project processing and client perceptions.

The ADB said the balance would need to be adjusted between lending and economic, thematic work and policy dialogue.

The second element would be to ensure that operations are underpinned by more rigorous analysis and that it becomes recognised as a leading source of ideas in its sectors of core focus.

The study recommended that in addition to higher staff resources and analyst level support, greater authority should be devolved to Pakistan Resident Mission, with the country director empowered to act on most matters.

The report also says that to complement the within-project focus on corruption, the ADB should ensure that it understands the nature, extent and drivers of corruption in each sector in which it engages to ensure that project design and separate initiatives incorporate effective anti-corruption measures at the sector or country level.

The report also recommends that if the Asian Bank increases resident missions staff resources significantly, greater efforts are needed to ensure compliance with the policy for their full staff involvement in project processing.

Similarly, the delegation of project administration should be accelerated and projects should be delegated as soon as possible after approval before they run into implementation problems.