| Project Detail |
The objective of the On-Farm Water Management Project for Afghanistan is to improve agricultural productivity in project areas by enhancing the efficiency of water used. This restructuring paper seeks the approval of the Afghanistan Country Director and the Administrator of the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund to introduce the following changes to project. The overall implementation of the project has been delayed significantly resulting in extremely poor utilization of grant funds. In order to improve the disbursement profile and to bring the project to a satisfactory closure by its current Grant closing date of June 30 2014, the Mid-Term Review Mission carried out in February 2013 has recommended restructuring of the project to scale down the activities with a cancellation of US$ 16 million from the original Grant amount of US$ 41 million. After consultation with the recipient, it was decided that the $16 million will no longer be required for the project as the activities originally envisaged under the Project would not be finalized before closing date. Accordingly, this restructuring involves the scaling down of the size of the physical infrastructure investments to a level that can be reasonably expected to be completed by the grant closing date. The revised target for command area serviced by on-farm infrastructure modernization will be 10,000 ha as opposed to the original target of 52,500 ha. In addition, as recommended by the MTR mission, the grant agreement will be modified to include the construction of five office buildings for the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) to accommodate the Irrigation Directorate and on-farm water management staff at the five regional centers of Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Baghlan and Jalalabad. |
