Recent News and Events
Published By: HVAP on: 2015-02-17
A Joint Review Mission for High Value Agriculture Project (HVAP) from International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and Ministry of Agriculture Development (MOAD) was conducted from 15-28 Jan, 2015. The Mission worked with the combined PMU team in Kathmandu and Surkhet as well as conducting field visits covering activities in six out of the seven priority value chains in four of the seven project districts (Dailekh, Surkeht, Jarjakot, Salyan). Meetings were held in Kathmandu with senior staff from MOAD, SNV and AEC. A wrap-up meeting was held with the Project Steering Committee on 28 Jan 2015. The overall assessment of project observed by the mission is as follows,
The overall progress is moderately satisfactory and continues to improve. The project has made good progress in implementing the recommendations from the MTR, notably:
• increased numbers of groups and businesses are now actively engaged with the project, with 234 grants and sub-projects already contracted, covering more than 7150 households, and many more at an advanced stage in the pipeline and to be contracted within this financial year;
• inclusion has been largely mainstreamed into all project areas in practical ways,
• social mobilization in project clusters has been strengthened, though further progress is still needed;
• value chain facilitation, including through the Multi Stakeholders Platforms (MSPs), is increasingly effective and well targeted around specific opportunities and issues;
• service market development activities have been initiated with specific MSPs having been held in each value chain (VC) to identify service demand among VC actors, service providers and begin networking and identification of practical opportunities for further development of service markets in the VCs;
• Clustering and MSPs have emerged as key elements of the approach and provide a strong foundation for more intensive project activities in the coming years.
Consequently, the project appears to be broadly on track to achieve it main outreach target to make substantial gains in income from the seven value chains. However, disbursement rates are still lagging behinds physical progress.
Six of the seven VCs are performing relatively well from a project perspective. Only one of the seven value chains, vegetable seeds, has faced adverse market conditions which have limited the scope for HVAP to support significant inclusive VC growth.