AGRICULTURAL COMPETITIVENESS IMPROVEMENT PROJECT

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The development objective of the Agricultural Competitiveness Improvement Project (ACIP) for Azerbaijan is to facilitate the access of agricultural producers to markets by strengthening sanitary and phytosantiary services, enhancing selected value chains, and providing financial services to agribusiness enterprises. The project has four components. The first component is support for sanitary and phytosanitary services. This component aims to strengthen the efficiency and effectiveness of sanitary and phytosanitary services in order to reduce existing obstacles to agricultural and food trade. The component will be structured into following three sub-components: (i) food safety capacity building to establish a roadmap for comprehensive reforms, including key principles for the national food safety control policy and enforcement; (ii) upgrading plant health and phytosanitary system will support upgrading the State Phytosanitary Control Services (SPCS) which is mandated to ensure phytosanitary safety on the import, production, storage, and processing of plant and plant products; and (iii) animal health and veterinary services will support the strengthening the State Veterinary Services (SVS) and promotion of a complementary private veterinary sectors as key elements being considered to provide a suitable environment for improving and securing animal production. The second component is agribusiness value chain development. This component will help develop value chains by partially financing demand-driven investment proposals. It will also support activities for improving seed varieties and quality of seeds entering the market. It has following two sub-components: (i) investment and advisory support for agribusiness value chain development to: (a) provide development support for value chain participants to assist them to establish productive partnerships and prepare sub-project proposals for funding under the project, and (b) investment support for agribusiness value chains; and (ii) seed sector development will help to build on the experience of Second Agricultural Development and Credit Project (ADCP-II) and will support the seed development chain that includes the National Research Institute for Crop Husbandry (NRICH) and its research stations. The third component is financial services to agribusiness. This component will promote growth of agribusiness or agro-food processing enterprises through a line of credit to enhance their competitiveness, increase production and improve technologies, building thus on the sizeable results in lending to agribusinesses and improved skills of participating banks in appraising agriculture-related investment loans, achieved under the Bank's previous intervention. The fourth component is project management. Management responsibility for the project will come under the State Agency for Agricultural Credits (SAAC) within the ministry of agriculture. ACIP will be managed by the Project Management Unit (PMU) located in the State Agency for Agricultural Credits (SAAC).