World Bank suspends $200 million Balochistan integrated water project

The World Bank (WB) has suspended $200 million 'Balochistan Integrated Water Resource Management and Development (BIWRMD)' project due to lack of progress in managing the project, disbursing funds, proceeding with the civil works, and fiduciary control. The project was signed in 2016 by the government of Balochistan through the Balochistan Irrigation Department with support from other government departments and various consultants and was targeted to be completed by 2022.
The project was financed from the International Development Association (IDA), on standard terms, with a maturity of 25 years, including a grace period of 5 years. WB has stated that sustainable water management is a priority for Balochistan and the Bank is strongly committed to working with its government to develop this critical resource for the people of the province. This was the objective when the BIWRMD was signed three years ago.
The Bank has issued the following statement: "unfortunately, there has since then been a lack of progress in managing the project, disbursing funds, proceeding with the civil works, and fiduciary control. As a result, the WB suspended the project and offered to work with the government of Balochistan over the next thirty days to restructure the scope and governance arrangements to more realistically begin to deliver sustainable water management to the province.
"WB will continue to work with the government on successfully implementing the wider program of support for the province. The Bank currently has commitments of more than $250 million in Balochistan, with the main investments in education, health, governance and water. The overall WB portfolio in Pakistan has 40 projects with a commitment of $7.42 billion including investments of over $3 billion in water management, hydropower and irrigated agriculture."
The objective of the project was to strengthen provincial government capacity for water resources monitoring and management and to improve community-based water management for targeted irrigation schemes in Balochistan.
BIWRMD was supporting investments in two of the eighteen basins in Balochistan - Nari and Porali river basins. These river basins were selected based on an assessment of surface water resources development opportunities.
Communities were to be mobilized for participation in construction and rehabilitation of irrigation and drinking water supply facilities; flood protection infrastructure; watershed management and environmental protection works; and on-farm water management and agricultural productivity activities.
The main project beneficiaries were targeted to be small-holding farmers (up to 12.3 acres) and medium holding farmers (12.35 to 49.4 acres) engaged in irrigated agriculture. In the project areas, approximately 42,800 farm households were to benefit from irrigation schemes and improved on-farm water management, 3,600 households were to benefit from improved potable water supply, 10,200 households from improved flood protection and 20,400 households from better watershed and range land management. In total, approximately 71,200 households (or an estimated 569,400 people) were projected to directly benefit. The province's hydro-meteorological monitoring and river basin information systems was also to be strengthened.
The project comprised three components. The first component, institutions, capacity and information was designed to support a gradual transition to Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) approaches in Balochistan in line with the existing IWRM policy. Institutional restructuring, professional development, installation and operation of hydro-meteorological systems, and establishment of multi-agency river basin information systems that provide public access to all available hydromet data for the two project basins were other objectives of the programme. It had two sub-components: (i) institutional strengthening and restructuring, and (ii) hydro-meteorological data collection and management to provide the required information platform for improved water resources planning.
The second component, water infrastructure and management investments was designed to support implementation of IWRM sectoral investments in the Nari and Porali basins within a framework of community mobilization and participation. This component had three sub-components including: (i) construction and/or rehabilitation of irrigation and potable water supply facilities; flood protection infrastructure; (ii) related watershed and rangeland management; and (iii) on-farm water management and agricultural productivity activities.
The third component, project management and technical assistance was designed to finance expenditures associated with overall project implementation costs, including incremental costs associated with the Project Management Unit (PMU) and the Project Implementation Units (PIUs), Project Supervision and Implementation Assistance.