Background

The current global crises and food system shocks have produced both supply constraints and price increases in global food and energy markets. The impact of the global crisis and food system shocks risks to jeopardize the country’s socio-economic recovery from the crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. After a sharp contraction of 3.1% in 2020, the economy recovered by only a small growth rate of 3% in 2021 and has just started to pick up momentum in 2022. In addition, a set of pre-existing socio-economic vulnerabilities in the Cambodian context risk to exacerbate the impacts of the converging crisis (i.e., COVID-19 and the global crisis and food system shocks). These include: a large percentage of the population clustering around the poverty line, a high level of poverty headcount (i.e., 17.8% in 2020), increasing inequalities, deeply entrenched and persistent gender inequalities, high levels of household indebtedness, and a weak system of social safety nets.

 

In this endeavor, UNDP maintains an Economic Team within the Policy and Innovation Hub (PIH), supporting the Government and other stakeholders on a range of topics – from inclusive macroeconomic policies to the delivery of innovative social protection measures. Current and pipeline projects including the provision of technical advice on IDpoor formula improvement, rapid poverty survey, ageing policy pilot, integrated formalization, Cambodia SDGs and national planning, and Multi-dimensional Vulnerability Index. The Junior Socio-Economic Consultant position is part of the PIH of UNDP Cambodia. Working under direct supervision of the Country Economist and in close coordination with the National Economist and Policy Analyst – Social and Economics, the incumbent is responsible for assisting the Economic Team with developing various concept notes and proposals, socio-economic analysis, policy research, and for assisting with coordination and administrative matters (See Section 3 and 4).

Duties and Responsibilities

The LTA holder is to support the economic team of UNDP Cambodia to design policy and implement programmes related to inclusive growth, SDG financing, social protection and national planning. These include the following sets of activities:

 

I. Policy engagement in terms of policy dialogue and research under the policy and innovation unit

 

  • Draft proposals, concept notes and Terms of References (ToRs) for relevant research, communication and policy assignments related to economic policy, social protection and national planning policies
  • Proof read and edit data analysis and reports from vendors/contractors and other sources before they are integrated into the socio-economic analysis produced by the team
  • Documentation, research, literature review and prepare summary of the different topics the economics team is involved in
  • Identify key trends, alternative and uncommon data sources that can be resourceful to unfold key questions and hypothesis to enhance the socio-economic analysis done by the team
  • Perform estimations, elaborating graphs, tabulations and slides for documents and presentations to support the team in undertaking socio-economic policy analysis
  • Prepare briefing notes
  • Support in development of policy recommendations for priority measures for economic policy, social protection and national planning policies
    • Conduct background policy analyses and provide recommendations
    • Prepare reports and power point presentations
    • Arrange consultations and compile comments

 

II. Support the Partnership management:

 

  • Facilitate and coordinate with partners such as UN agencies, private sectors, government and development partners to do data collection/extraction and consolidation to enhance economic modelling and other predictions to propose policy recommendations
  • Maintain and update economic policy and social protection communication strategies
  • Draft blog posts on economic policy, ageing policy and social protection
  • Draft Memorandum of Understanding and stakeholder engagement plans
  • Regular information updates
  • Draft of outreach communication materials including brochures, pagers, project briefs, booklets, presentation, project reports etc.

 

III. Support the pipeline formulation and resource mobilization:

 

  • Collect data and information needed for the project formulation
  • Draft concept notes and project proposals based on guidance of the Country Economist, National Economist and/or Socio-economic Policy Analyst
  • Prepare powerpoint presentation
  • Arrange stakeholder consultations; and
  • Consolidate comments from key stakeholders

 

Separate summary TORs will be developed for specific assignments (within the scope of the overall LTA and the categories above).   Specific deliverables of each assignment will be based on an agreed sub-ToR and PO issuance. All property – tangible and intellectual – produced during assignments/ LTA would remain the property of UNDP. The consultant should also ensure confidentiality of all the information received during assignments.

 

Interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=94574 for more detail information about term of reference, instructions to offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer through online

Competencies

  • Good report drafting ability
  • Ability to work collaboratively with team members by sharing information openly and displaying cultural awareness and sensitivity.
  • Excellent communication skill is an advantage
  • Positive and results-oriented attitude, able to meet targets/deadline.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

 

  • A minimum of a Bachelor’s degree (preferably a Master’s degree) in economics, development studies, public policy, international relations or social science

 

Experiences:

 

  • One year of working experience in socio-economic development and analysis;
  • Relevant experience in development work at international or national level;
  • Proven basic research/ analytical skills – in statistics/ econometrics; Ability to write policy papers and working documents (reports/ assessments/ reviews); and
  • Decent knowledge of the Cambodian development context.

 

Languages:

 

  • Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of Khmer is an advantage

 

Please be informed that we don’t accept application submitted via email.

 Interested individual offeror must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

 

  1. Proposal:
    • Letter of explaining why they are most suitable for the work
    • Sample of written work to be assessed to prove a good written communications skill
  2. Financial proposal (Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP)
  3. Personal CV including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references

 

Interested Offerors are required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.

 

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email chanpisey.ky@undp.org and cc procurement.kh@undp.org . While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 5 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice