ARGENTINA - Unido

high rates of economic growth, suggesting a clearer emphasis of UNIDO’s cooperation on
supporting the Government in the promotion of a more equitable industrial development.
Not all of the interventions can be considered relevant for implementation by UNIDO,
which is a specialized agency, supposed to provide technical assistance for industrial
development with an important component of methodological support and advice and
which should not limit itself to the provision of funds. In several of the projects UNIDO’s
contribution was limited to cover the cost of equipment or consultants identified by local
counterparts or by the Italian cooperation and there was no methodological or know-how
contribution from UNIDO.
Furthermore, UNIDO has acted in some areas (e.g. guarantee funds/financial sector,
export promotion, cattle farming/animal well being) which are not covered by the
corporate strategy of the organisation and where no significant in-house competence
exists. In other areas, where well established UNIDO competence exists (e.g. export
consortia) no use of existing methodologies and tools was made, which is considered an
important weakness in the implementation of the programme and which represented a
limitation of the target group relevance and of the effectiveness of the interventions
(entrepreneurs of consortia).
The Programme was managed by one project manager only, without utilizing the expertise
available in other specialized branches of UNIDO HQ. This is part of the explanation why
the corresponding UNIDO methodologies and tools were not applied.
The institutional arrangements envisaged in the original programme document (Steering
Committee and Technical Committee) were established very late (2 years after programme
start), which led to a unilateral programme management by UNIDO during the first phase
of the programme, without major involvement of the national stakeholders in decision
making. This failure to establish a local participative mechanism for the strategic
management of the programme on the one hand and the centralized management from
UNIDO Vienna (including direct interventions of the office of the Director General of
UNIDO) on the other, are considered main causes for the problems the programme faced,
since they resulted in a lack of consensus among the main stakeholders (Government of
Italy and Argentina and UNIDO) with regard to objectives and focus of implementation.
The quality of management and coordination has varied significantly throughout the
implementation of the programme. While there has been an improved management by
UNIDO HQ during the period 2006/2007, before that time, the management is considered
inefficient for several reasons, some of them are: the UNIDO project manager was replaced
two times (one of the three managers did not speak Spanish) and the national coordinator
was replaced once. Furthermore implementation was suspended for longer periods and the
project coordinators of rural projects in regions far away from the capital were based in
Buenos Aires.
As a consequence of the above-mentioned deficiencies there are no concrete results in
terms of capacity building. The effectiveness of the programme has been low. Very few of
the interventions have produced direct results (outcomes) for the target group (SMEs).
Exceptions are the sectoral projects in the meat sector, the cooperative in Tucumán and
the honey project in Cordoba. A large part of the resources was used for studies that were
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