Uruguay

The Uruguay Non Communicable Diseases Prevention Project will seek to support the Government's efforts to further strengthen its health delivery services and the current... Show More + health policy framework for Non Communicable Diseases (NCD). The restructuring will: 1) streamline, modify and replace project indicators to better reflect the impact of project activities; 2) scale up activities under component three; 3) change implementation arrangements incorporating cooperating agencies to accelerate project implementation; and 4) the closing date of the project will be extended for twenty months from December 31, 2012 until August 29, 2014 to allow for completion of project activities and achievement of projects objectives. The changes were discussed and agreed upon with the Government during the midterm review in November 2011 and a supervision mission in April 2012. Show Less -

Ratings for the Transport Infrastructure Maintenance and Rural Access Project for Uruguay were as follows: Outcomes were moderately satisfactory; risk to development... Show More + outcome was moderate; Bank performance was satisfactory; and borrower performance was also satisfactory. Some lessons learned includes: Project Development Objectives (PDOs) and PDO indicators should be commensurable to what a project can realistically attain. Both the PDO and the corresponding PDO indicators were defined too broadly, given the scale and scope of the Project, and with too optimistic targets. A US$70 million specific investment loan can contribute to address road maintenance issues but cannot be expected to impact sector-wide trends. This should be adequately reflected in terms of project design, ensuring that objectives and indicators are coherent with the project's capacity to deliver. If needed, complementary instruments should be adopted to address broader sector-wide issues identified by the borrower. Fast-track preparation projects should include significant flexibility in their design so as to become quickly operational: although the project was prepared rapidly, this implied that some of the preparatory work typically: engineering designs that should have been undertaken prior to project approval were actually carried out in the first years of implementation. An early understanding of the particularities of a market can avoid procurement-related delays further down the road. In the case of this operation, an earlier identification of the specific characteristics of the Uruguayan construction market, and the consequent adaptation of standard Bank qualification criteria applied in bidding documents, could have avoided some of the delays encountered during implementation. Ensuring adequate financing for maintenance remains a challenge and future Bank engagement in the sector should focus on this issue. Sector financing still faces strong restrictions; budget allocations cannot account for sector needs. Show Less -

The objective of the Institutions Building Technical Assistance Loan Project for Uruguay is to improve the borrower's public sector performance by supporting its public... Show More + sector modernization program in the areas of monitoring and evaluation, performance-based budgeting, and e-government; and strengthening its institutions involved with the design and implementation of public policy reforms in the areas of taxation, promotion of the business environment, and social protection. This extension is necessary to complete activities which will substantially contribute to the achievement of the project development objectives to improve public sector performance. Among the most important activities are: 1) software development for a risk management system for case selection in the tax advisory and revenue department of the social protection agency; 2) development of a purchasing management system for the centralized procurement agency; 3) completion of the ongoing SIIAS (Sistema Integrado de Informacion para el Area Social) construction and its implementation. The closing date of the project will be extended from December 31, 2011 until September 30, 2013. Show Less -

The development objective of the Energy Efficiency Project for Uruguay is to increase the demand for and competitive supply of energy efficient goods and services, contributing... Show More + to : (a) increased efficiency of energy use; (b) reduced reliance of the Uruguayan economy on imported energy and fuels; and (c) reduced emission from the energy sector. These changes will allow the project to: i) deepen the cultural change in favor of energy efficiency achieved by the project, ii) complete the implementation and further evaluation of the labeling and standards program, iii) strengthen the implementation of the Uruguay Energy Efficiency Fund, iv) complete the energy efficiency investments currently undertaken by the national electricity utility, and v) have an accurate evaluation of the impact of the project. Altogether, all of these actions will assure the full disbursement of the grant (US$ 6.8 million). Show Less -

The objective of the Institutions Building Technical Assistance Project for Uruguay is to improve the Borrower's public sector performance by: (i) supporting its public... Show More + sector modernization program in the areas of monitoring and evaluation, performance-based budgeting, and e-govemment; and (ii) strengthening its institutions involved with the design and implementation of public policy reforms in the areas of taxation, promotion of the business environment, and social protection. This reallocation is intended to: (a) create a new expenditure category (category six) to reflect the withdrawal of loan proceeds to pay for the front-end fee which occurred upon project effectiveness; (b) allocate undisbursed funds for the project preparation advance to category one of the loan agreement and (c) allocate previously unallocated funds to category one of the loan agreement. Show Less -