Remote Rural Communities Development Project

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The development objective of the Remote Rural Communities Development Project for Bhutan is to increase agriculture productivity and access to community assets in remote rural areas by improving access to markets, irrigation, agricultural technologies, and community infrastructure. There are three components to the project. The first component is rural infrastructure. The focus of this component is to connect the communities to larger roads and regional markets and to improve production potential through improved availability of irrigation. The second component is community, marketing and productive infrastructure. This component will cover investments in marketing and post-harvest infrastructure, critical community-level infrastructure, and investments identified by producers to increase agricultural productivity. The third component is project management and institutional strengthening. This component supports project management, including the monitoring and evaluation functions of the project. It covers: (a) technical and financial management, (b) procurement, and (c) supervision of compliance with environmental and social safeguards. This component will strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests (MoAF) to effectively coordinate implementation and provide procurement support to local communities as needed. This component will also support midterm and end-of-project project monitoring surveys that would provide project performance information at the activity, output, and outcome levels to meet the requirements of the existing Royal Government of Bhutan (RGoB) monitoring system and the Planning and Monitoring System (PLAMS).