STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESSES OF FEMCIDI PROGRAMING CYCLE (DOCUMENT PREPARED

STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESSES OF

STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESSES OF

FEMCIDI PROGRAMING CYCLE

(Document prepared at the request of Ambassador Gordon Shirley

Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the OAS)

MOST IMPORTANT WEAKNESSES

PRESELECTION OF PROJECTS:

SEDI does not have established technical criteria to guide the pre selection (ex ante criteria) of project profiles.
Many of the projects presented are of poor technical quality, current proposal format does not require the inclusion of indicators, and monitoring of project implementation is not built in project design.
Although the number of proposals presented to FEMCIDI has decreased over the years, the number presented for consideration each year (5 new plus continuation) still greatly exceeds the resources available in FEMCIDI.
Technical review of new proposals by SEDI technical offices remains informal and on an ad hoc basis.
Lack of an established mechanism for SEDI staff to assist Member State institutions in the design and preparation of FEMCIDI funded projects.
Difficult to ensure that projects presented are responding to the mandates issued to SEDI and the OAS by Member States, because of the increasing number of mandates issued. More consistency is needed between ministerial mandates, summits and the Strategic Plan
Inter American Committees are currently not invited to participate in our programming cycle.
Although the FEMCIDI was designed to promote technical cooperation among Member States, there are almost as many national projects as multilateral projects included in the programming (many countries still present a great number of national projects that are not necessarily linked to larger hemispheric or regional initiatives).

CENPES:

Political process use for selecting technical experts
Level of expertise of some CENPES members
Some of CENPES members are also directly involved in project execution
Excessive number of projects to review in a very short time
Role of Secretariat is too limited during the evaluation process
Committee members have repeatedly criticized the quality and relevance of the criteria they are given to evaluate the proposals.

MONITORING:

Inadequate monitoring of project implementation by SEDI (being corrected)
Current monitoring system is based on the OAS trusting the local executing in doing what they say
Lack of monetary resources for SEDI to monitor all projects in the field
Lack of human resources (three people to follow up 92 projects)
Inadequate and erratic reporting to Member States about project implementation, progress and evaluation
Different levels of involvement in monitoring by the GS/OAS National Offices

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION:

Some executing institutions lack the capacity (knowledge/staff/counterpart resources/experience) to implement projects
Difficult to coordinate activities among participating countries in multilateral projects
Constant need to extend deadlines due to a range of obstacles (weather, high coordinator turnover, change in government, economic downturns etc).

RESOURCES:

Declining level of resources since the fund was created.
Very low level of resources in some sectoral accounts.
Segregation of funds into sectoral accounts restricts SEDI’s ability to adequate fund good projects (i.e. can only accept a certain number of proposals for each sector based on the funds available therein).
Absence of some of major donors (no contribution to the Fund).
To date, FEMCIDI resources are not used as seed funds to leverage other resources (happens on an ad hoc basis at the prompting of the presenting institution or country).
Lack of criteria to use resources in Integral Development account (main point of CA, that proposed to use it for multi country, multi year, high impact projects)

EVALUATIONS:

Not all projects are evaluated (just some, and according to resources available)

MOST IMPORTANT STRENGHTS:

Due to the lack of resources (financial, technical and human) SEDI has been trying to address some of the major challenges and to date we have identified the following strengths:

FEMCIDI is one of the only multilateral funds established in the Western Hemisphere with the purpose of promoting cooperation for development at all levels, but especially looking at the exchange of information and experiences through the implementation of multilateral projects (allows dialogue and cooperation between countries of different levels of development)
Comparative advantage of the fund for development initiatives in the Hemisphere because it has the political buy in of all 34 member states
FEMCIDI initiatives can be aligned with consensus reaching mechanisms (like ministerial meetings)
Can promote regional integration via horizontal cooperation
Allows small countries to present projects that could start as pilot initiatives and be scaled up and replicated in other countries and/or regions
Allows small countries to present projects that would not be financed by other institutions
Countries design their own solutions to perceived development needs (complete ownership without interference from SEDI)
Formats for presentation of progress reports, final reports and execution plans have been improved
Better understanding of nature of participation of countries in multilateral projects and better identification of resources allocated in each participating country
SEDI is isolated from political pressures during the pre selection process
CENPE mechanism is also isolated and does not permit the involvement of Permanent Missions
SEDI has completed an operations manual, which will hopefully improve transparency about the selection, funding and implementation of proposals

CANADA:

Three specific requests

Only one national project per country per year. (We support too many national projects today, and this is not acceptable to them)
Elaborate criteria for Integral Development Account
Implement monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for all projects

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