Summary of publication

This evaluation outlines the background, implementation performance, and project impact, as well as conclusions and lessons learned from the project.

As part of the Vietnam–Australia Monitoring and Evaluation Strengthening Project, an ex-post evaluation of the Vietnam Provincial Water Supplies Project was undertaken during July 2002. The objectives of the evaluation were to:

• improve the capacity of the Ministry of Planning and Investment and Vietnam–Australia Monitoring and Evaluation Strengthening Project stakeholders to undertake ex-post evaluations of official development assistance projects
• evaluate the Vietnam Provincial Water Supplies Project.

The evaluation concludes that, based on the reports reviewed and the two towns visited, the Project has produced a significant positive impact in improving the well-being of households in the target towns through the improved water supplies provided by the Project. It is suggested that the net benefits of new water supply developments were not as high as those that could have been achieved by addressing Unaccounted for Water (Non-revenue water) earlier in the Project.

While capacity building activities generated a major positive impact on the commercial operations of the Water Supply Companies, additional resources and time should have been directed to these activities to reinforce and strengthen the objective of making the Water Supply Companies more commercially and customer focused.

Notwithstanding this positive impact on the commercial operations of the Water Supply Companies involved, the Project has not provided a replicable donor-assisted model for implementation of market based (commercial) and demand driven water supply development in other provincial towns. That is, the approach currently requires the use of very scarce donor grant-funds to meet infrastructure costs and this approach cannot be replicated to meet the demand in the other 400 townships with inadequate WS&S services.

The community development activities built on existing town organisation activities and have provided sustainable models for child-to-child education in environmental health and implementation of community based micro-activities focused on environmental sanitation. However, without the introduction of innovative approaches to community development challenges, such as initiatives to assist the poor and effectively target significant women's issues, the use of grant funding for urban WS&S is arguably not justified in the Vietnam context.

Given that loan funds are available to the Government of Vietnam for urban water infrastructure development and the need to foster a commercial focus to Water Supply Company operations, Government of Australia grant funding of urban water supply infrastructure is difficult to justify, unless it is providing complementary capacity building to loan funded initiatives or piloting innovative means of targeting the poor.

Full publication

Ex-Post Evaluation: Vietnam Provincial Water Supplies Project [PDF 769 KB]