Proceedings of the 13th Meeting of the
Transport and Communications Working Group
9
to confront ideas basing on evidence can improve the quality of the public debate and policy
decision-making.
Question: How can we ensure that good project appraisal are actually used by the decision
makers and not only political considerations are reflected in the project selection?
Answer: Technical experts have the duty to adequately inform the decision-makers and show
the advantages of adopting forward-looking perspective and evidence-based decision-making
in selecting and implementing transport projects. Although technical and objective arguments
may be more complex and difficult to manage in the public debate, educating the power and
citizens to confront ideas basing on evidence can improve the quality of the public debate and
policy decision-making.
4. Status of Transport Project Appraisal in the OIC Member Countries and
Lessons Learnt From the Selected Case Studies
Mr. SMIT and Mr. Mehmood delivered their presentation with a focus on the status of Transport
Project Appraisal in OIC Member Countries and lessons learned from case studies. At the outset,
they presented the results of the desk research and survey conducted.
Results of the desk research, the survey, and the case studies
 Desk research provides the ingredients for developing a framework for appraisal of
transport projects, based on international best practices. Desk research also includes a
review of the appraisal of transport projects in OIC member countries.
 A survey has been carried out focused on project appraisal in OIC member countries. The
survey was sent out to the 38 Member States of which 12 countries responded. Some
interesting results were found from the survey, which substantiates our conclusions of the
case studies.
 A total of six case studies has been selected which I will discuss in the following slides. The
case studies are Afghanistan, Iran, Jordan, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia.
Case study Afghanistan
Afghanistan has been facing a number of challenges in the last few decades. In order to address
these challenges, Afghanistan has embarked on a number of international collaborations to
restore the country’s industry. For example, the Asian Development Bank has been working
closely with Afghanistan’s public institutions in developing a strategy-course to be implemented
through a number of significant investments and development measures. To this end, the ADB
assisted in developing the Afghanistan Transport Sector Master Plan Update (ATSMPU) 2017-