A Case Study of the WB Southwest Poverty Reduction Project Dr.Huang Chengwei (Guangxi FCPMC)

A Brief Introduction Of SWPRP The Major Features Of SWPRP The basic experience accumulated from SWPRP Significance and impact of SWPRP

Part One: A Brief Introduction Of SWPRP

A Brief Introduction Of SWPRP ----Project area: Twelve project counties were all the major extremely poor counties to be supported under the National 8-7 Poverty Alleviation Program, whose stone-mountain area was accounted for more than 40% of their total area.  The 91 project townships were extremely poor townships with the largest areas and the lowest per capita income among the 12 project counties, while 515 project villages accounted for about half of the total number of villages in 91 townships. The project covered 186,600 poor rural households, totaling 903,800 people.   The rate of poverty in the project area was far higher than both the Region’s and the country’s average, and meanwhile the average per capita rural income and average per capita possession of grain were also much lower than the Region’s and the country’s average.

A Brief Introduction Of SWPRP ----Loan/Credit Amount Loan: 47.50 million US dollars;Credit: 42.44 million SDR, or about 66 million US dollar equivalent   Loan/Credit Conditions:Loan: 20-year maturity, including 5-year grace period. Interests are to be paid on the floating interest rate of IBRD; On-lending conditions: 20-year maturity, including 5-year grace period, to be on-lent to the project enterprises by the Guangxi Autonomous Region through three project municipalities, with the interest rate not lower than the existing interest rate of the same loan of the Agricultural Development Bank of China.  Credit: standard conditions of IBRD, 35-year maturity; on-lending conditions:20-year maturity, including 6-year grace period, annual interest rate is 2%.

A Brief Introduction Of SWPRP ---- Major Objectives of the Project (1) Study, explore and verify the effectiveness of cross-regional, cross-sector comprehensive poverty alleviation project; (2) Reduce by a large margin the absolute poverty of the 12 national extremely-poor counties; (3) Facilitate a healthy and orderly provision of more than 90,000 surplus labor force in the poor areas to richer rural areas and rapidly developing medium-sized cities; (4)Strengthen poverty alleviation institutions, conduct training on the project management team and improve the level of project management of poverty reduction projects and that of monitoring on poverty; (5)Contain the deterioration of the environment in the poor stone-mountain areas through soil improvement and water conservation projects; (6)Encourage the active participation by the general public of the localities through allowing the decisive role of the households in project design and implementation.

A Brief Introduction Of SWPRP ---- Project Component( Implementation Content)   (1)Education Component: construction of school buildings; provision of desks, chairs and teaching equipment; aid to poor students through tuition and nutritional subsidies; conducting training on the teachers and the managers of schools; (2)Health Component: setup of village-level clinics and township-level hospitals; establishment of village-level cooperative medical service fund; conducting training on village and township healthcare staff; strengthening prevention and control of diseases through water quality and disease monitoring and preventive inoculations.

(3) Labor Export Component: creation of a cost-effective and market-oriented mechanism, providing job opportunities to the extremely poor surplus labor force to work locally and away from their hometown; provision of basic professional skill training and logistics support to the labor export volunteers, ensuring their safety and welfare;   (4)Rural Infrastructure Component: construction of rural roads, safe drinking water supply network, small irrigation facilities, rural drainage works, soil conservation works, biogas-generating pits and rural power supply network;

(5)Agriculture Component: setup of a set of improved land comprehensive utilization system, and through extending advanced agricultural application technologies, to support grain and economic cropping, forest and fruit tree plantation and development of aquaculture, and thus upgrading the comprehensive agricultural productivity in mountainous areas and turning around the deterioration momentum of the environment;   (6) Second and Third Industries Component: establishment of labor-intensive processing enterprises and free rural markets using the agricultural produce of the project area as the raw material;

(7) Institutional Building Component: working on the institutional design; clarifying the institutional functions and working procedures; provision to the project entities of the office facilities such as offices, equipment, vehicles and furniture, etc.; development of human resources through training and technical assistance; development of computer system for use in project management;   (8)Project and Poverty Monitoring Component: mainly setting up a set of objective and accurate poverty and project monitoring system, thus strengthening the capacity of the project management entities in project design, implementation, procurement, financial management, monitoring and evaluation, etc.

(9)Loan Component: implementation in the cities of Nanning, Beihai and Fangchenggang of forestry, vegetable planting, aquaculture breeding and low-income-earner housing components, creating new job opportunities for the surplus labor force from the poor counties, to explore and establish a cross-regional new poverty alleviation mechanism which integrates the development of the poor areas with urban development.

Part Two: The Major Features Of SWPRP

Feature(1)： Targeting the Poor Project Area 12 Counties, 91Township, 515 Villages 186,600 Poor Households 903,800 Poor people。

项目区贫困概况 12个项目县都是国家八七扶贫攻坚计划中的重点扶持特困县，石山面积占总面积40%以上。 91个项目乡是12个项目县中贫困面最大、人均收入最低的特困乡，515个项目村约占51个乡所有村总数的50%。项目覆盖18.66万贫困农户、90.38万贫困人口。 项目区农村贫困发生率远高于全区、全国平均水平，而农村人均收入、粮食拥有量却大大低于全区和全国的平均水平。

项目区贫困概况 12个项目县都是国家八七扶贫攻坚计划中的重点扶持特困县，石山面积占总面积40%以上。 91个项目乡是12个项目县中贫困面最大、人均收入最低的特困乡，515个项目村约占51个乡所有村总数的50%。项目覆盖18.66万贫困农户、90.38万贫困人口。 项目区农村贫困发生率远高于全区、全国平均水平，而农村人均收入、粮食拥有量却大大低于全区和全国的平均水平。

项目区贫困概况 12个项目县都是国家八七扶贫攻坚计划中的重点扶持特困县，石山面积占总面积40%以上。 91个项目乡是12个项目县中贫困面最大、人均收入最低的特困乡，515个项目村约占51个乡所有村总数的50%。项目覆盖18.66万贫困农户、90.38万贫困人口。 项目区农村贫困发生率远高于全区、全国平均水平，而农村人均收入、粮食拥有量却大大低于全区和全国的平均水平。

项目区贫困概况 12个项目县都是国家八七扶贫攻坚计划中的重点扶持特困县，石山面积占总面积40%以上。 91个项目乡是12个项目县中贫困面最大、人均收入最低的特困乡，515个项目村约占51个乡所有村总数的50%。项目覆盖18.66万贫困农户、90.38万贫困人口。 项目区农村贫困发生率远高于全区、全国平均水平，而农村人均收入、粮食拥有量却大大低于全区和全国的平均水平。

项目区贫困概况 12个项目县都是国家八七扶贫攻坚计划中的重点扶持特困县，石山面积占总面积40%以上。 91个项目乡是12个项目县中贫困面最大、人均收入最低的特困乡，515个项目村约占51个乡所有村总数的50%。项目覆盖18.66万贫困农户、90.38万贫困人口。 项目区农村贫困发生率远高于全区、全国平均水平，而农村人均收入、粮食拥有量却大大低于全区和全国的平均水平。

项目区贫困概况 12个项目县都是国家八七扶贫攻坚计划中的重点扶持特困县，石山面积占总面积40%以上。 91个项目乡是12个项目县中贫困面最大、人均收入最低的特困乡，515个项目村约占51个乡所有村总数的50%。项目覆盖18.66万贫困农户、90.38万贫困人口。 项目区农村贫困发生率远高于全区、全国平均水平，而农村人均收入、粮食拥有量却大大低于全区和全国的平均水平。

Feature(2)： Multi-Targets (1)Income objective (2)Resource objective (3)Professional skills education objective (4)Basic education objective (5)Medical and health objective (6)Infrastructure objective

Feature(3)： Comprehensive Development

Comprehensive management for an all-round development based on the needs of the people. The project had used the administrative village as the basic unit, used the objective of comprehensively addressing many poverty-resulting factors and improving the overall poverty situation, and taken a package of input options, thus making the project very comprehensive. The project content includes nine components as education, health, labor export, infrastructure, agriculture, second and third industries, institutional building, monitoring and loan poverty reduction. The design of the overall project and the components has extensively reflected the integration of poverty reduction development and human resources development, which has further strengthened the comprehensiveness of the project.

Poverty Resulting Reasons Project Contents 1. Low a forestation rate, serious water & soil erosion 1. Closed forests 2. Fast-growing & high- yield plantation 3. Longan planting 4. Bitter tea planting 5. Honeysuckle planting 2. Single operating structure, lack of funds 6. Rural energy generating biogas pits & firewood-saving kitchen-rage building 3. Low unit grain yield, lack of grain 7. Setup of walls and keep soil 8. Mulberry planting & silkworm raising 9. Corn yield-raising project 4. Low rate of quality seeds, seedlings and breeding stock 10. Seeds & seedlings breeding 11. Pig farming 12. Sheep breeding 13. Mari culture 5. Difficulties in sales of agricultural and side produce 14. Reeling mill 15. Fruits processing plants 16. Free rural markets building 6. More surplus labor force, lack of 17. Labor export 7. Insufficient primary schools, low ‘qualification rate’ for teachers 18. Education 8. Lack of healthcare & medication, difficulties in seeing a doctor 19. Health 9. Human & livestock difficulties in drinking water 20. Human & livestock drinking water projects 10. Difficulties in access to roads 21. Rural roads construction 11. Lack of access to information, poor farmer quality, backward technically, etc. 22. Technical services and monitoring Project Role ：Major Role — Supplementary Role ┄

Feature(4)： The All-round Development

Feature(5)：The construction of the household participation system Firstly, project selection was based on opinions first “from top to bottom” and then “from bottom to top”. Secondly, efforts were made to ensure poor households to participate in project implementation. Thirdly, farmers were motivated to participate in social service projects and some infrastructure construction projects by providing labor, and participate in agriculture and labor mobility activities by providing a small amount of matching fund; Fourthly, efforts were made to improve the transparency of project implementation. Fifthly, efforts were made to improve the level of farmers’ participation in project implementation and decision-making.

Feature(6)： Sustainable development of the project The project-covered communities have not only remarkably improved their poverty through the project implementation, but also have formulated sustainability. The project management institutions set up for this purpose have formed long-term stable development capacity, with which the project model is expanded and the project outcome can produce sustained impact.

Part Three: The basic experience accumulated from SWPRP

-----Comprehensive and sustainable models are the basic thinking to effectively alleviate poverty and being well off for the poor.   -----The support from the leading officials, close coordination among different agencies and the hard work by the project agencies are the fundamental guarantee to achieving effectiveness for a comprehensive poverty reduction project. -----The project implementation management should target at standardized management and the policy and work team building needs to be strengthened.

----The most important elements for the smooth progressing and results achieved with the project are to put in place the domestic counterpart funds, timely replenish World Bank finance, pull funds together and input them in an integrated approach and meanwhile, strengthen financial management.   ----The project design and implementation should always give top priority to the active and extensive participation of the farmer households. ----Innovation is needed in integrating the advanced project management theories and options with the realities in the poor areas of Guangxi Autonomous Region.