Resettlement Action Plan Budget Template
A RAP budget structure covering compensation, resettlement, livelihoods, implementation and monitoring — 33 lines, with the basis of estimate and the ones projects habitually omit marked.
33 budget lines · basis of estimate · omission flags
Most resettlement budgets are wrong before they are approved
The figure that reaches the project's financial model is usually produced at feasibility, from an estimate of affected area and a set of district rates, months or years before anybody has counted a household. It is then rarely revised after enumeration, because by then it has been reported, approved and built into the funding structure.
A reviewer's standard check is to multiply the enumerated quantities by the stated rates and compare the result to the budget. It fails frequently, and when it does the honest conclusion is that the plan is committing to entitlements the project has not funded.
The lines that go missing
Eleven lines in this template are flagged as commonly omitted. They share a characteristic: each falls due after the point where the project's attention has moved on.
- Transitional support — sized for the real gap between displacement and the replacement asset producing, which for a household relocating outside the planting window is eighteen months, not three.
- Livelihood working capital — the binding constraint on a displaced farmer is usually cash at the planting window rather than knowledge, and training budgets rarely contain any.
- Documentation support — obtaining identification and succession documents for the households that cannot otherwise be paid.
- Grievance and engagement through implementation — most events occur after approval; most of the budget is spent before it.
- External monitoring and the completion audit — both fall after construction closes, and need a budget line that survives it.
- Titling — which routinely outlasts the project by years and needs a funded owner after closure.
Contingency is not padding
Two provisions, for two different risks. Quantity variance covers the gap between what feasibility estimated and what enumeration found — which is almost always upward, because early estimates miss ancillary structures, secondary claimants and common-property losses.
Price escalation covers the interval between valuation and payment. This is the one treated as optional and it is the one that determines whether compensation was adequate at the moment it arrived. A programme that pays every assessed amount in full, two years late, has not paid replacement cost — and the shortfall is borne entirely by the displaced household.
Questions
- What should a RAP budget contain?
- Compensation for every entitlement in the matrix, resettlement site and housing costs, livelihood restoration over its full multi-year life, implementation costs including the implementing unit's own staffing, the grievance mechanism's operating costs, monitoring through to completion audit, and two contingencies — one for quantity variance and one for price escalation between valuation and payment.
- Why are resettlement budgets so often wrong?
- Because they are drawn at feasibility, before anyone has counted anything, and rarely revised after enumeration. The lines that go missing are consistent: transitional support, livelihood restoration beyond training, grievance operating costs, monitoring after construction ends, the implementing unit's own costs, and price escalation over a multi-year payment programme.
- How much contingency should a RAP budget carry?
- Two separate provisions rather than one nominal percentage. Quantity variance should be sized against the difference between feasibility estimates and enumerated counts on comparable programmes. Price escalation should be calculated from the expected interval between valuation and payment applied to a published index — because compensation assessed at one date and paid at another is no longer replacement cost.
- Who pays for the RAP budget?
- The borrower or project developer, not the lender directly. On publicly financed projects this is an appropriation through the normal budget process, which is why the funding cycle frequently constrains the payment schedule. Securing the full sum, ideally in a dedicated account, before implementation begins is the single most effective protection against a stalled payment programme.
- Does the budget include the cost of preparing the RAP?
- Usually as a separate line or a separate contract. The consultancy fee for preparing the plan is a fraction of the compensation and implementation budget, and the two should not be conflated when a project reports what resettlement cost.
The software behind this
SmartLARMS keeps this as a live record, not a spreadsheet
A template is a starting point. The version that survives a completion audit is one where every change is attributed to a person and a date, and where the numbers reconcile to what was actually paid.