Day: January 9, 2022

International business groups are urging Hong Kong to restart international flights after a ratings group warned the travel restrictions, imposed last week because of COVID-19 outbreaks, could have dire effects on the territory’s economy.

Fitch Ratings said, “A new wave of restrictions on various social activities within Hong Kong and a further tightening of controls on international travel … are likely to dampen economic growth prospects.”

Some Hong Kong executives who traveled out of the territory for the winter holidays found that they could not return to Hong Kong because of the new restrictions that are designed to be in place for at least two weeks but may last longer. Fitch said, “We believe the tightening of restrictions on international arrivals will create further obstacles to the territory’s ability to serve as a regional headquarters” for foreign multinational companies.

The Cyprus Mail reports that a University of Cyprus scientist and his team have discovered a new COVID variant. Dr. Leontios Kostrikis told the publication that deltacron has the genetic background of the delta variant and some of the mutations of omicron.

“The frequency of the mutations was higher among those in hospital which could mean there is a correlation between deltacron and hospitalizations,” Kostrikis told the Mail.

Australia’s New South Wales state reported 16 deaths from COVID-19 on Sunday, its deadliest day in the two-year pandemic. The state, Australia’s most populous, already has 200,000 people in isolation, and reported more than 30,000 new cases.

On Sunday, New South Wales Health issued a statement allowing essential workers to return to work if they do not have any symptoms, if their employer says they are needed. They must wear a mask and pass a daily rapid antigen test. Some employers are reporting as many as half their workers are staying home because they have had contact with an infected person.

Victoria, Australia’s second-largest state, reported more than 44,000 new cases and four deaths, Reuters reported. The entire country will surpass 1 million infections sometime Sunday, according to the Australia Broadcasting Corp.

Saturday, more than 100,000 people took to the streets across France to protest proposed new restrictions that will require proof of vaccination to eat out, travel on intercity trains or go to a cultural event. The turnout was four times the government’s estimate of 25,000 protesters who marched on Dec. 18, Agence France-Presse reported.

Protesters also marched in several German cities Saturday, demanding a halt to restrictions on those who have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus. The main demonstrations occurred in Duesseldorf, Frankfurt and Magdeburg.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Friday that proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID-19 test will now be required to enter bars and restaurants in the country. Currently, proof of vaccination is required to enter many public venues.

Protests of government coronavirus restrictions also took place Saturday in Turin, Italy, and Beirut.

Global surge

The United Kingdom’s death toll from COVID-19 since the pandemic began topped 150,000 on Saturday, more deaths than any other European country except Russia. Britain reported a record of 146,390 new cases on Saturday.

“Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on our country and today the number of deaths recorded has reached 150,000,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement. “Our way out of this pandemic is for everyone to get their booster or their first or second dose if they haven’t yet.”

India’s capital, New Delhi, was shut down Saturday to halt the spread of the coronavirus, after a nearly fourfold nationwide spike in infections in the last week alone. Most shops were closed, but some essential services remained open.

More than 140,000 new cases across the country were reported Saturday, the most since the end of May, the health ministry said. It also reported more than 280 new deaths, for a total of nearly 484,000 since the pandemic began.

The surge in infections in India is fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant as political rallies attended by tens of thousands of people continue to be held by candidates before state elections are held later this year.

Source: Voice of America

Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa asked China to help restructure debt repayments as part of efforts to help the South Asian country weather a worsening financial crisis, his office said in a statement on Sunday.

Rajapaksa made the request during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Colombo on Sunday.

Sri Lanka has benefited from billions of dollars in soft loans from China but the island nation is currently in the midst of a foreign exchange crisis placing it on the verge of default, according to analysts.

“The president pointed out that it would be a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rajapaksa’s office said in the statement.

China is Sri Lanka’s fourth biggest lender, behind international financial markets, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan.

Over the last decade China has lent Sri Lanka over $5 billion for highways, ports, an airport and a coal power plant. But critics charge the funds were used for white elephant projects with low returns, which China has denied.

Rajapaksa also requested China to provide “concessional terms” for its exports to Sri Lanka, which amounted to about $3.5 billion in 2020, the statement said, but did not give more details. Rajapaksa also proposed allowing Chinese tourists to return to Sri Lanka provided they adhere to strict COVID restrictions, including only staying at pre-approved hotels and visiting only certain tourist attractions.

Before the pandemic China was Sri Lanka’s main source of tourists and the island imports more goods from China than from any other country.

Sri Lanka is a key part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a long-term plan to fund and build infrastructure linking China to the rest of the world, but which others including the United States have labelled a “debt trap” for smaller nations.

Sri Lanka has to repay about $4.5 billion in debt this year starting with a $500 million International Sovereign Bond (ISB)maturing on Jan. 18.

A $1.5 billion yuan swap from China helped the island boost its reserves to $3.1 billion at the end of December. Debt repayment to China in 2022 is likely to be smaller than its ISB commitments of $1.54 billion, at about $400 million-$500 million, a Sri Lankan finance ministry source told Reuters.

Sri Lanka’s central bank has repeatedly assured all debt repayments will be met and said funds for the January ISB has already been allocated.

Source: Voice of America

Evaluation Guru is an evaluation capacity development video series launched by Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Independent Evaluation Department (IED). As part of IED’s Evaluation Academy initiative, the series takes the multimedia approach to meet the growing demand for evaluation capacity development in ADB’s client countries. The series illustrates how to design, implement, and manage evaluations which in turn will guide programs and projects towards development effectiveness, foster accountability, and learning.  In the fourth episode of Evaluation Guru, former IED Director General Marvin Taylor-Dormond talks about Program Evaluation.

Transcript

Evaluation Guru Ep 4

Program Evaluation

Hello and welcome to Evaluation Guru. Through this series we will share with you how to design, implement, and manage evaluations which in turn will help you improve the development effectiveness of your projects, programs, and strategies, as well as foster accountability and learning.

Marvin Taylor-Dormond

Former Director General

Independent Evaluation Department

Asian Development Bank

We’re talking in this episode about program evaluation. When we speak about program evaluation we refer to programs, projects, strategies, policies.  To conduct program evaluation we will use the same seven steps that we talked about in a previous episode. And so the first step to conduct a program evaluation is to identify and define the object of evaluation. In this case, clearly understand the program, the project, the strategy, or the policy that you are going to evaluate. This is the foundation of your program evaluation. You must understand the objectives, the context, the budget, the resources, the mechanisms of impact intended through the program that you’re about to evaluate. It is a good practice to complete this first step with the definition of what we call a Theory of Change.

The second step is to define the evaluation criteria. For sovereign projects in Multilateral Development Banks, we use criteria such as relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, coherence, and impact. For higher plane evaluation the criteria or the areas of evaluation depend on the strategy or the policy that we are assessing. It is important that you clearly define what areas of the program you want to assess. And clearly focus your evaluation on an overarching question. The subordinating questions should support the overarching question. For this, it is a good practice to use the principle of Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive set of questions.

The third step, define the standards. There are certain standards that allow us to determine whether the program or project or strategy is highly relevant, or just relevant, or below par. For more complex evaluations, what we call higher plane evaluations, you should understand the different dimensions of your program to come up with an approach paper for your evaluation. You can consult the set of approach papers that have been produced in Independent Evaluation Department (IED) by visiting the IED’s site.

The fourth step is to define the methods that you’re going to use to measure the program according to each of the criteria. And you may use experimental methods, surveys, interviews, document reviews, statistical analysis, beneficiary analysis, contribution analysis. It is important that you set this clearly in what we call an evaluation design matrix.

The fifth step is to measure the degree of accomplishment of your object with the criteria, and to compare this with the standards. Proceed with this measurement using the method that you defined in the previous step. And always be ready to adjust your approach once you are measuring the degree of accomplishment. You may find surprise in the field by reading documents or by applying any of your statistical analysis.

The sixth step is to put the evidence together and come up with your overall assessment. Sum up the assessment by criteria and to establish the overall assessment of your program by summarizing this criteria.

You have all the pieces together now and you come to the seventh and last step, writing your evaluation report. It is important that you keep in mind some fundamental principles to write your program evaluation. The first place, use your theory of change, the one that was defined in step one, to describe what worked, what didn’t work, and why? What where the channels of impact? Did they work well? Was it well defined? Were there failures in understanding the circumstances on the ground? Secondly, answer the questions that you established in step 2. The overarching question has to be clearly answered and the subordinating questions as well. Third, identify key lessons that are derived from your assessment. Fourth, identify your key issues that the program has faced during implementation. And finally, fifth, write your recommendation. Keep the recommendations very basic, addressing only the fundamental issues you have identified in your evaluation. And always remember, you evaluate with a retrospective approach but always with a prospective intention of improving operations in the future. You may always use the lessons learned, the issues you identified, the recommendations to improve other similar programs in the future.

Use is a concept that must permeate the mind of the evaluator from the beginning, from inception. You need to spend time with the evaluee, with the stakeholders. Listen to them, develop trust, so that the evaluees and the stakeholders in general are able to use your evaluation report in a productive way. We will devote more time to “use” in an upcoming episode, and for now thank you very much.

Thank you for watching Evaluation Guru. We will be back with another episode on how to design, implement and manage effective evaluations. Till then, don’t forget to look up our social media accounts. Bye for now.

Source: Asian Development Bank