Moldova Agriculture Competitiveness Project

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The development objective of the Agriculture Competitiveness Project for Moldova is to enhance the competitiveness of the agro-food sector by supporting the modernization of the food safety management system, facilitating market access for farmers, and mainstreaming agro-environmental and sustainable land management practices. There are four components to the project. The first component is enhancing food safety management. This component will finance activities aimed at enhancing human, institutional and technical capacity of the country's food safety management system, as well as ensuring regulatory harmonization with European Union (EU) requirements. Adoption of EU acquis on Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Standards (SPS) carries significant implications for state institutions in charge of food safety and quality, producers and consumers. EU regulations in these fields demand some of the highest standards in the world and consequently compliance by Moldova to these rigors would entail a lengthy and complex process that requires substantial financial efforts. The second component is enhancing market access potential. This component will finance activities aimed at improving marketability and market integration of Moldova's high value agricultural products specifically in the horticultural sector where the country has proven comparative advantages in the production of fruits and vegetables. The component will address institutional and market access elements of the competitiveness framework presented earlier by supporting government efforts in creating an enabling environment for voluntary farmer productive partnerships (business cooperatives or producer groups), and by assisting them in creating and expanding their asset base for the application of modern post-harvest technologies. The third component is enhancing land productivity through sustainable land management. This component will finance activities aimed at mainstreaming sustainable land management practices and technologies, and rehabilitation of anti-erosion shelterbelts. As part of the competiveness framework presented earlier, it would support governance and resource endowment/depletion aspects that can increase competitiveness of the agriculture sector by enhancing land productivity. The fourth component is project management. The component will support costs associated with project implementation, including operational and consulting costs for fiduciary, component coordination, monitoring and evaluation support to Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry (MAFI) and MOE.