Final Report - European Commission - Europa

Chapter 3 Explaining the performance of the Phare programme 27
B. Economic Development
Phare assistance in transport, water and agriculture were not based on a sector
strategy and implementation was often extremely poor, especially in infrastructure
projects. The impact on economic development has therefore been very low, although
the Delegation is beginning to improve its systems. Local community development
(through the Albanian Development Fund) appears to have been more successful.
Transport and water
In both the transport and water sectors, Phare funding was directed principally at large
infrastructure projects. 49 Given the extremely poor state of both systems, and their crucial
importance for sustainable economic development, substantial investment was justified.
Potential impact was large. However, in both sectors, impact to date has been severely
reduced both by poor strategy and implementation.
Sector strategy in Transport
There was no coherent strategy in the Transport sector. Although development of an overall
transport policy was an objective of the transport programme, there were no specific actions
designed to achieve it. Later, under the 1999 COP, the EC made support to transport
conditional on establishment of a high-level policy advisory unit in the MoPW responsible for
co-ordinating and directing strategy; but the unit was not established. The EC is now,
belatedly, providing assistance for the completion of a long-term National Transport Master
Plan. 50
Since there was no national transport masterplan, nor any serious analysis of how an
improved transport network could contribute to the objective of economic development, it is
not clear on what criteria projects have been selected. The implicit assumptions seem to have
been that: (i) the priorities were so obvious that such a process was not essential; and (ii)
Albania’s economic development depended on integration with the regional transport network
at the earliest opportunity. Whilst some of the early priorities were “obvious” at the
conceptual level (the critical links between Albania’s major centres of population and
economic activity, for example), their implementation in a planning vacuum has led to some
serious errors. 51
Choices were also driven by the funding instrument. Road projects were funded through the
“cross-border cooperation” (CBC) programme; this naturally drove the emphasis on the
North-South and East-West Corridors, and by definition precluded smaller roads to the less
accessible parts of the country. Not surprisingly, given the lack of an overall strategy or
analytic capacity, there was no analysis of the poverty or gender impact of roads. There is
49
50
51
Initially, as well as large road projects, the transport programme included a range of
unfocused interventions in other areas: e.g. road safety, urban transport management,
railways. These have now largely been concluded (or were never implemented at all) with
relatively little impact.
Work on the scoping study was underway at the time of the evaluation mission and the
expected completion date for the plan is May 2003.
For example, the over-design of the Rrogozhine-Lushnje road, the failure to plan for the
Durres coastal area bypass and severance problems resulting from the design of the Vora-
Sukth road. These mistakes have proved difficult (and costly) to put right