PROJECT FINDING
The identification and the selection of priority projects are indispensable not only for achieving the successful agriculture and rural development in developing countries but also for seeking smoothly for donors' development assistance.
Although the identification of such projects is, in principle, the task of developing countries, the donor community needs to help them to go through the task by providing expertise and information, to the extent best possible, on the basis of the request from developing countries, which still face the problems of inadequate human resources, expertise and financial resources.
The major objective of the "ADCA project finding" is to facilitate the agriculture and rural development cooperation for both the Government of Japan and developing countries. Once a prospective candidate project is identified through field work, the ADCA mission provides the result of its findings to the Government of the developing country concerned and recommends the Government to take initiative to consult with the Government of Japan for official assistance.
Upon return the ADCA mission prepares an ADCA project finding report for each identified project. ADCA submits the report with the recommendation to the Government of Japan for review and consideration of the possible official technical and/or financial assistance, such as support by JICA or JBIC.
In this sense, the ADCA project finding is, in other words, sharing an essential part of the process of development assistance provided by the Government of Japan. Recognizing the role and the importance of the ADCA project finding, the Government of Japan decided in 1977 to partially finance this activity. Since then, thanks to the guidance and the support of the Government of Japan, ADCA has smoothly and successfully identified a large number of candidate projects in over 110 developing countries.
The following chart shows the process of the ADCA project finding:
FEASIBILITY STUDY
The bilateral negotiation will be initiated between the Government of Japan and the recipient country as both governments decide to give priority to ADCA identified projects in consideration of the recommendation and the findings of the ADCA mission.The official preliminary survey will be conducted by JICA as a JICA grant aid program based on the Exchange of Notes agreed upon between the two Governments.
In general, the preliminary survey is conducted to examine whether the target project will be carried out by phase or not depending on the size of the project. It also checks with the necessity of the formulation of a master plan prior to a feasibility study in case of request for a comprehensive development plan or a long range development plan.
One of the objectives of the feasibility study is to look into the viability of the project in terms of technicality, socio-economy, financing, institutions and so on. Hence, carrying out a feasibility study requires a high level of expertise provided by a number of qualified experts, specialists and engineers, which are currently inadequate resources in most developing countries. Another important aspect of the JICA supported feasibility study is in that most of the field work as well as desk work will be jointly carried out by the staff of the recipient government and the members of the JICA study team based on the on-the-job training program.
In case of agriculture and rural development projects, the expertise to be made available for the feasibility study and related work is retained solely by ADCA and its members. ADCA members can field a number of well-experienced specialists and engineers in order to carry out successfully the feasibility study of agriculture and rural development. It should be noted that these specialists and engineers are very familiar with JICA schemes and procedures including the capacity building arrangement for the recipient country.
Upon completion the report of the feasibility study will be submitted to both Governments of Japan and the recipient country. Concurrently, the project will be incorporated with high priority into a national plan of agriculture and rural development of the recipient country. In case the immediate implementation of the project is urged in the recipient country, the report will possibly turn into a part of documents requesting for financial assistance from bilateral or multilateral financing organizations, such as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
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