IFAD Grant

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Employments, Entrepreneurships and Business Opportunities created by PAF Nepal

Contract Identification No. PAF-II- AF2- IFAD-QCBS-194/KM

INTRODUCTION

The Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF), established under the Poverty Alleviation Fund ACT 2063 is an autonomous body. It has been implementing its targeted programs in 55 districts through Community Driven Development (CDD) Approach with the financial support from the World Bank and IFAD.

As of the FY 2072/73, PAF has provided financial supports to more than 29761 Community Organization (COs) to implement various subprojects under the category of Income Generating and Community small-scale infrastructure.

As per the modality of the interventions, more than 80 percent of the financial supports provided to the COs for implementing Income Generating subprojects has established as the Revolving Fund (RF) and has been managed by the community themselves. The average fund size of such RF in a CO is NRs. 400,000.00 and the volume of such fund is in increasing trend.Around 75 % of the Income Generating (IG) activities are livestock related and other are small business, vegetable farming, and agro-forestry etc. activities.

BACKGROUND

PAF has reached to more than 800,000 poor households who are directly promoting from programs of Income Generating sub-project activities. These HHs are engaged in income generating activities through the support of revolving fund grants. Most of CO members are self-employed and their family is engaged in different activities of livelihood and agriculture for earnings. In this context, every beneficiary HHsisengaged in self-employment, entrepreneurial business and additional income generation through the support of RF.

As PAF has already intervened in 58 districts (55 regular and 3 innovative), the RF must have good impact on employment and additional incomeof every HHs. PAF now seeks the impact of RF on employment and business creation in CO members or within the settlement where COs are located. This is one of the key achievements and outcome of PAF programs which has national level impact on employment.

OBJECTIVE/S AND SCOPE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The specific objective of the assignment is to study the impact on employment opportunities and business creation through PAF intervention in poor communities. Other objectives of the study are:

  • To understand the impacts of PAF on the targeted households in terms of creation of employment opportunities, business creation, income generation
  • To identifyIG activities which have become most successful and profitable in creating employment in poor communities over last ten years
  • To identify the indirect/spillover effects of the PAF in terms of socio economic empowerment of the targeted communities and HHs
  • To understand the trend of sectors/services (mostly livestock) chosen by CO members and CO cooperatives and identify any constraints.

PAF investment is mostly focused on capacity building, IGA and infra subs projects, which has direct impact on empowerment and economic development respectively. Under the original design of the project, a focus was not placed on the “employment” issues. Hence, there is no specifically dedicated activity on the employment or skill development.

However, the field observations have revealed that the outcome of these IGA and infra activities are contributing to self-employment and wage employment, resulting in the increased demand of larger loan size through Cooperatives.

According to CEDA’s impact evaluation reports, the CO-member experiences reduced migration from their communities. This assessment will fully utilize the existing data from the multiple rounds of the household surveys conducted by CEDA in the past. These data will serve as baseline, and additional assessment will be conducted by focusing on employment issues, and by visiting the same households who were covered by CEDA’s study.

TASK

  • Develop an inception report which details the technical methodology and sampling techniques.
  • Propose a sampling methodology based on maturity of COs as 2 -4 Years, 5 - 8 Years and more than 8 Years for conducting the study covering all five regions and three geographical areas, taking into account the number of years of exposure to the programme (at least two years).
  • Time constraint should be considered in deciding the sample size. The preliminary report should be ready by May-June 2017.
  • Review the existing baseline and follow up survey data conducted by CEDA especially on income, employment and remittance.
  • Make an analysis of these available data whether PAF has made difference in terms of income opportunities, employment and remittances.
  • The Consultant will develop data collection tools which shall cover key indicators relating to the top ten income generation activities available in PAF MIS which is directly proportional to the employment factors
  • Conduct field assessment through interviews and FGDs with CO members, Cooperatives by visiting the selected households and COs who were covered by CEDA’s past rounds of surveys; Control groups will be also taken.
  • Report writing with analysis of the change after PAF intervention by comparing the baseline and current, and by comparing the project and control groups;
  • Prepare and lead the presentation at the stakeholder workshop in KTM in February 2017 on the major findings;

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY:

  • PAF seeksto adopt mixed (qualitative and quantitative) methodology for the survey study so that the statistics could be drawn more precisely.
  • The consultant can suggest the best method of conducting such surveys on their experience and effectiveness of the result obtained. In such case, PAF would judge the appropriateness of the methodology proposed and whether it will make it possible to answer the study questions under the assign tasks.
  • The consultant should provide outline of what data sources will be used for this study.
  • The result of this work shall be independent and well explained on standard reporting methodology.
  • The data shall be sampled on the basis of MCRIL's categorization from the pool of COs provided by PAF.
  • All rounds of household surveys done by CEDA will be shared.
  • The inception report will provide methodological guidance on scientific and technical issues on employment creation
  • The final report will maintain the structure and content as per the standard guidelines of PAF
  • There will be a Steering Group appointed by the PAF to ensure consistency with these terms of reference.

DURATION:

The duration for this assignment is 4 months from the date of signing the contract.

Firm / Consultant Qualification and Experiences

Qualification and Experience of the Firm:

  • 5 years of documented experience inthe developmentsector and experience of conducting similar socio-economic studies.
  • Having documented evidence of average financial turnover of 2 million annually for last three years.
  • Other relevant documents like company registration, VAT registration, latest tax clearance, etc. are necessary.

Qualification and Experience of Team Members

  • Consultant should provide key professionals and field level personnel and other logistic support to carry out the assignment.
  • Interviewers (enumerators) should have relevant experience for the assigned job.
  • The consultant will be responsible to ensure key professional staffs and assistant level personals required to perform the assignment.

The required qualification, experiences of the professionals should be as follows but not limited to:

Key Professionals:

Team Leader: Master degree with 10 years of relevant experience in survey, impact studies, analytical and report writing skills together with database and task management.

Socio-Economist:Master degree with 8years’ experience in evaluating employment and Social and economic surveys, impact studies.

Data Manager/Analyst: Master degree with 6 years or Bachelor's degree with 8 years relevant experience in data base design and management, data cleaning, assembling and analyzing the primary dat. They should be expertise in the STATA as CEDA‘s data set is in STATA format.

Field Team Staff:

Quality Control Supervisors:Bachelor degree with 3 years relevant experience in supervision and managing the field team in similar tasks

Enumerators/ Research Assistants: Intermediate level education with experiences in data collection

Data entry operators: Experience in data entry in prescribed software/program

The estimated number of field team staff for the assignment is given below:

WORKPLAN

Main outputs / Indicative delivery date
Submit Proposal which details methodology including sampling techniques. Finalization of COs district wise which meets the requirement provided in task section / To be submitted within 2 weeks from the date of signing contract
Inception report on plan of the consultant to execute the study including the methodology which shall be followed in data collection process and agreed by PAF which should include:
  • Study tools that will be used for data collection
  • Storing/Digitization mechanism
  • Data analysis tools that will be adopted
Indicators:
  • Number of impact indicators met or ensured
  • Level and degree of implementation of desired indicators
/ To be submitted within 4 weeks from the signing of contract
Pilot test in some districts, / Within 6 week from signing of contract
Preliminary report / To be submitted within 12 weeks on agreed deliverables
Final report / Within 16 weeks from the signing of contract in an acceptable format and meeting all deliverables.

KEY DELIVERABLES

  • Inception report
  • Datasets of stored data after digitization
  • Final report

PAYMENT TO THE CONSULTANT

The payment will be based on the following terms:

  • 10% of the contract amount after submitting the inception report detailing the field plan
  • 40 % after the Completion of survey and Draft Report
  • 50% after approval of the final report
  • Maximum 20% advance shall be provided against the bank guarantee.

PROCUREMENT METHOD

The consultant for the above stated assignment will be selected in accordance with the procedures set out in the World Bank's Guidelines Selection and Employment of Consultants by World Bank Borrowers (January 2011, Revised July 2014).The Consulting firm will be selected on the basis of World Bank Guidelines selection of Consultants by using Quality and Cost Based Selection QCBS giving quality 80 percentages and Cost 20 percentages weight.

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