The following are some of the main points raised during the plenary session on "Achievements from 2008":
- Need to better communicate IFAD successes
- There are major factors affecting the financial system
- Need to clarify role of PDs
- Improvement/quality of proposal design: recommend that IFAD seeks more participation of local agencies at design level
- Inclusiveness: local people are critical for implementation
- Targeting: what are the approaches and tools used
- Ownership of project management
- Consistency of support to project managers
- Procedures: integration of procedure, harmonizing
- Still learning about direct supervision, only one-year since taken over
- The procurement process system needs to be more flexible, simplified
- Need clear guidelines for projects from IFAD
- Communicating success: We are reporting and learning but there is still more to do. We also need to communicate failures, not just successes
- Agrees re. financial system. Issues with RIMS on top of problematic M&E but these are indicators that IFAD needs. Direct supervision has opened our eyes (rating scales)
- Role of PD: influencing policy. Direct role in facilitating evidence based-policy influence, in issues where we have an impact
- Agrees that development should be demand-led and project design more open-ended. Will try to continue to respond to this. Agrees that enhanced ownership and participation contribute to project quality
- Targeting: there are a number of different approaches, specific to project locality and nature
- We are obliged to work through national systems, should be addressed in designing, harmonization of procurement procedures, which is a challenge
- Follow up on direct supervision: improve country involvement, implementation support and capacity building on harmonizing approaches
- Implementation manual: delays in conceptual design to make it implementable, it is a challenge
- Know we need to improve, there was an internal audit and the findings were not good
- Need to take more care in procurement in next 12 months
- Have a long way to go, reaction time to processing time
- Need assistance from you: it takes need 30 days to process so the sooner we get it, the faster it will be. We also need to have the full documentation
- Are aware that there isn't enough dedicated staff to procurement, will bolster numbers in 2009
- It will improve, so bear with us!