Country Contexts and Patterns in Public Works Programs
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Self-targeting is often complemented with community targeting methods to minimize administrative and financial constraints. It also can be undertaken by village leaders, internalizing the cost of targeting and reducing the administrative burden of other methods. Other program components can also be adapted to reduce administrative and informational constraints. For instance, many programs have switched their payment mechanisms from food to cash. Ethiopia uses a combination of food and cash payments, depending on the availability of food in the market and beneficiary preferences (see chapter 12). An array of electronic payment systems that make use of mobile phone and debit and biometric smart cards have been developed to reduce the cost of transactions. These methods also reduce the cost of monitoring while greatly increasing transparency and accountability. Fiscal feasibility remains a challenge for low-income agrarian countries. Most of the programs in these countries are financed by donors or a combination of donors and government. And, given their low capacity, many governments rely heavily on nongovernmental organizations or development partners to carry out program implementation. The experiences of a large-scale program like the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) are instructive in this regard, as the program has managed to work with donors to pool financial and technical resources. This approach makes it possible to harmonize all donor efforts in Ethiopia and enhances supervision and monitoring of the program, while avoiding excessive transaction costs for the government and donor agencies. The rights, obligations, and coordination arrangements of this government-donor partnership are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding. Several joint bodies administer the program, which minimizes costs. The Joint Coordination Committee oversees program implementation by monitoring progress toward its goals and providing technical guidance on specific components or cross-cutting issues (World Bank 2010). Similarly, the experiences of India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) program illustrate the potential of scaling up public works interventions addressing seasonal poverty for rural populations dependent on agricultural wages by enhancing their livelihood security. Since its operationalization in 2006, MGNREGS has reached more than 50 million rural wage worker households in the country, providing over 9 billion days of employment. The implementing legislation applies to all 28 Indian states; 90 percent of the program’s funding is provided by the national government, with the remaining 10 percent contributed by state governments (Dutta et al. 2012).