Improving Transport Project Appraisals
In the Islamic Countries
7
appraisal process only when there is a direct relationship of the project with either another
infrastructure or an economic activity. The same applies to KSA where, despite consultation is
addressed both in the Vision 2030 and in other legislative initiatives as an important step in
project planning and implementation, consultation practices are still to be fully development
and institutionalised.
The development partners and IFIs form an important part of the institutional landscape. Besides
bringing in the requirement in to do a proper appraisal, these organisations obviously represent
funding opportunities, as well as a wealth of knowledge and experience. In some instances,
capacity building elements can be packaged with the funding made available for transport
projects, including for appraisal of projects, such as in the case of support to the Road Sector
Development Team in Nigeria.
Capacity and tools
All countries have organised themselves to manage the project appraisal process, often relying
on relevant lead institutions , such as Ministry of Transport or Ministry of Works, or mode-
oriented agencies or authorities, which are part of theseministries, for example road authorities.
For the purpose of managing the larger transport projects, often dedicated Steering and
Technical Committees are established, including most relevant public stakeholders, for example
in Jordan. In many cases, in dealing with more standardised projects, the responsibility for
project appraisal is placedwith a planning department of a ministry, such as in the Nigerian case.
In Nigeria, a Road Sector Development Team has been established, funded by a variety of
development partners, to support the project appraisal process. This team is well equipped to
apply HDM-4 as a road planning tool, and as s such acting as a knowledge centre, providing strong
support to the sector. The capacity to carry out project appraisal of the local private sector
consultants differs per country, and often consortia are formed, including international
consultants. Iran has a system for public certification of competences released by the Plan and
Budget Organisation and a requirement to rely on certified consultants to carry out project
appraisals. This is certainly a good practice in respect of ensuring that the appropriate capacities
are mobilised for project appraisal.
Training on project appraisal does not take place at a large scale. This finding is supported by a
result from the survey, where 67% of the respondents pointed out that training programmes to
build capacity in the country are not available. Sometimes training is provided as part of a
technical assistance project, such as in the Jordan transport strategy development project. In
other cases, e.g. in Iran, training programmes exist, however, do not directly concern the
performance of project appraisal, but rather project preparation more in general, which in turn
positively influences the quality of the appraised projects.
Tools to support project appraisal are sometimes used, for example HDM-4, as mentioned above.
There is a need to be able to deal with appraisal tools that can deal with low volume roads.