Peter Burgess ... Background
Some Lessons / Experiences

Yemen … Shrimp Fisheries Development Project … World Bank ... 1984

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Yemen … Shrimp Fisheries Development Project … World Bank

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Elapsed time of 24 hours … overnight … we were able to get meaningful information about the project which had not been forthcoming using standard World Bank oversight interventions for more than a year … in reality since the beginning of the project more than three years before.

At the fisheries level I wanted to know why the project was ten times as big as we had recommended. It turned out that the 'decision making' had been based on an 'executive summary' prepared by non-fisheries experts and translated into Arabic by a translator with no technical understanding of fisheries. Simply put, they adjusted to fleet size so that they would theoretically catch 100% of the total biomass every year … a formula for rapid massive commercial failure.

Based on the accounting it was obvious that costs were as large as possible rather than being as small as possible … probably 'kickback' of one sort or another, and likely at multiple levels of the political and project hierarchy.

To its credit, the World Bank supervision team in the field, together with a representative of DANIDA (the Danish International Development Assistance Agency) concluded that the project should be terminated as soon as possible. Telephone approval for this was obtained from the World Bank in Washington and from Danida in Copenhagen. The team then left Hodeida and reported back to Sanaa to do the normal 'end of mission' meetings with the Government before departing the country.

In Sanaa, out team was not allowed to have an 'end of mission' meeting with the Government … and after some delay left the country without ever having this meeting.

I went on to other work. About three months later I checked in with the World Bank team to get an update on this assignment. I was horrified to learn that the World Bank and Danida had reversed their telephone agreement about early termination of the project and they were continuing to disburse as if nothing had happened. The excuse that I was given was that because the 'end of mission' meeting had not taken place, the Government considered the supervision mission null and void.

I am disgusted, and it still bugs me more than 30 years later