Donor funding and implementation of road development projects

Abstract

A lot has been written and said in praise for the increase in funding of the roads sector as an answer to the desired state of the roads in the country. The majority of developing countries heavily rely on donor funds for the improvement of the road infrastructure. However observations of the road development projects that are funded by the donors have a lot amiss. Therefore little is known about the effects of donor funding requirements on the implementation of road development projects. This study examines the effect of donor funding requirements on the implementation of road development projects in Uganda National Roads Authority. A sample of 64 respondents comprising of Directors, Project Managers, Station Engineers and Project Engineers was chosen using purposive sampling. The objectives of the study were; (i) to examine the effects of donor procurement requirements on implementation of road development projects (ii) to examine the effect of donor legal requirements on the implementation of road development projects (iii) to examine the effect of donor financial performance requirements on the implementation of road development projects and (iv) to establish the relationship between donors funding requirements and implementation of road development projects in Uganda. The research used cross sectional survey design methodology. The research largely applied a quantitative method for data collection, whereby structured questionnaires were designed and administered to the respondents. Documentary review was used to get qualitative data. Secondary data from various sources was also used. The research findings revealed that donor funding requirements positively affect implementation of road development projects. The research findings indicated that; procurement, legal and financial requirements affected project implementation by 37.1%, 23.7% and 15.6% respectively of donor funded projects in UNRA. The research findings also indicated that donor funding requirements were followed in UNRA. However, the research findings indicated that road projects were not completed on time, road projects were not allocated all the required funds, there was low absorption of donor project funds, the cost of completed road projects were much higher than the initial contract price and donor requirements did not lead to the development of the local contractors. The study recommends that UNRA should ensure that debt funded projects are implemented on schedule and according to work-programs to avoid payment of excess commitment fees on un-utilized funds. The Government should also budget adequate counterpart funding requirements for all loans procured and the evaluation of projects by the donors using internal rate of return (IRR) needs to be revised since the areas where some projects are located may not have major economic returns at the time of evaluation or in the near future to come.