I. Introduction    Philosophy, Purpose, Procedures

This document provides the monitoring plan for the Improved Policy Reform and Financial

Intermediation Program under the USAID funded Trade and Investment Reform Project

(TIRP), Republic of Ghana. The project contributes to the accomplishment of the USAID

Ghana Mission's Strategic Objective One (SO1), enhancing the role of the private sector, and

to achieving the objectives of Ghana's Vision 2020.  This plan is developed within the AID's

monitoring and evaluation policies and procedures that are based on managing for results

(Series 200, Chapter 203: Managing for Results: Monitoring and Evaluating Performance).

The purposes of this plan are to develop a process and procedures for obtaining information to

improve the planning and implementation for services to be delivered under the contract, to

evaluate and improve program management and decision making, to develop and provide

information that will document the lessons learned from contract activities, and to provide the

information essential to USAID's oversight and accountability responsibilites.  

Monitoring and evaluation can contribute greatly to the successful implementation and to

assuring the accomplishment of the contract's objectives.  However, effective monitoring

requires substantial amounts of information, a process that requires utilization of project

resources that could be used for implementation activities.  Thus, there is always a t radeoff

between monitoring and implementation; care must be used t o assure that a disproportiona

share of the project's resources are not used for the monitoring and evaluation functions.  A

basic way to minimize the costs of monitoring while simultaneously providing the essential

information is the development and implementation of a well designed monitoring plan that

provides for t he automatic generation of that information through, for example, trip and

activity reports, routine data collection from published sources, etc. that are entered into a

database for easy access and use in analysis of project activities.  This document, then,

develops such a monitoring plan for the Improved Policy Reform and Financial Intermediation

portion of TIRP.

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II. Overview     Types, frequencies, formats, responsibilities, Ghanaian involvement

This section gives an overview of the monitoring plan with details presented in subsequent

sections.  Numerous sources will be used to obtain data and information for monitoring

contracted activities and their impacts (see Appendix I for a partial listing of the sources).  It

should be noted, however, that there are problems with respect to the availability of Ghanaian

data, with respect to quantity, quality and timeliness.  Thus, while official sources will be used

to the greatest extent possible, adequate monitoring will require that all available sources be

utilized and even that the program will need to generate some of the necessary information.

A. Types of Monitoring

Types of activities/results to be monitored: under this plan cover two general categories of

activities.  The first is the project implementation activities as represented by the milestones in

the Technical Proposal and Contract.  These are clearly enunciated measures that define the

obligations of Sigma One Corporation under the performance based contract.  The second set

consists of the impacts of the project activities on the economy of Ghana.  This is a two phase

process which, in the first phase involves the development and adoption of policy reforms,

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