The Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development Project Phase II (LASED II)

1.1 The Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development Project (LASED) is a project to support the implementation of the Royal Government’s Social Land Concessions (SLC) Program to distribute land to the landless and land-poor through social land concessions to improve livelihood of poor households and vulnerable groups through Commune Based Social Land Concession. LASED Project is implemented by NCDD Secretariat and the General Secretariat for Social Land Concessions (GSSLC) in accordance with provisions of Article IV of the General Conditions incorporated in the Financing Agreement between Kingdom of Cambodia (RGC) and International Development Association (IDA). The project period is five years, July 2008 to June 2013, and project cost is US$ 11.50 million. In addition, LASED has been implementing in Kratie, Kampong Cham and Kampong Thom. The objectives of LASED are to:

• Distribute state land suitable for agriculture, together with appropriate support services to qualified landless and land-poor households; and
• Introduce and implement a transparent and standardized process for expanded implementation of locally initiated social land concessions.

1.2 Implementation of LASED respects the following principles:

• Promote good governance and rule of law;
• Support and strengthen the land reform agenda of the Government;
• Encourage civic engagement;
• Prevent environmental degradation;
• Promote transparency and accountability; and
• Ensure sustainable growth.

1.3 LASED has three quantitative indicators those guide project performance and provides criteria to assess progress and success of the project.

• Numbers of SLC target communes -20,
• Numbers of Target Land Recipient (TLRs) who resettle in the SLC – 3000 households, and
• Size of SLC -10,000 hectors.

1.4 Project activities are divided into four components

• First component is related to the commune based social land concession planning and land allocation. This component covers cost of training, incremental operating costs, goods, and contracted technical services to commune councils to prepare plans for SLC sub-projects.
• Second component concerns on rural development services and investments. This component is to provide subproject grants for the commune councils, and to cover cost of civil works, goods, technical assistance and training services identified in approved SLC sub-project plans.
• Third component focuses on the sustainable and transparent program development and provides fund for technical assistance, salary incentives, training, incremental operating costs, small civil works, and vehicles and goods. At the national level, the component support GSSLC for nationwide activities of information dissemination, technical and policy backstopping for provinces. Evaluation of LASED project and SLC experiences for feedback in formulation of additional policy and institutional development to support SLCs and potential program expansion is another activity under this component.
• Fourth component covers cost related to project administration and support the National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development Secretariats NCDDS and Provincial Unit Administration (PUA) to strengthen fiduciary and administrative capacity and reporting.