Rural Enterprise & Small-Scale Commercial Agriculture Development Project

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The Rural Enterprise and Small-Scale Commercial Agriculture Development Project for Armenia aims to help targeted farmers and rural entrepreneurs have a better link with markets, increase their income from rural activities, and enlarge employment opportunities in rural areas. There are three project components. Component 1A provides support for the further development of small rural businesses and agro-processors through: (a) enhanced rural financial services such as credit for working capital requirements, long-term credit for investment, and leasing programs for processing and agricultural equipment; and (b) promotion of rural business linkages through a program of small grants provided on a competitive basis to introduce and demonstrate business and technological innovations that could improve market access and links between producers and processors. Component 1B assists emerging rural business entities to introduce innovative business mechanisms and improve market linkages, and to demonstrate such improvements to a broader audience of rural entrepreneurs. The project will award small grants under a Competitive Grants Program. Goals of this sub-component are to: (1) accelerate the transfer of improved technologies and business practices to others; (2) build capacity of rural service providers to support rural entrepreneurs; (3) assist small rural businesses to take advantage of economic opportunities; and (4) help the Ministry of Agriculture establish more public-private linkages for reaching farmers and rural businesses. Component 2 comprises two main sub-components: (a) strengthening the decentralized agricultural extension system to improve linkages with village-level authorities; to increase the effectiveness and outreach of the flow of information on technological, management and marketing improvements; and to further develop the technology assessment program and on-farm demonstration activities; and (b) strengthening seed and seedling production capability of Armenian producers. Component 3 aims to stimulate economic development at the community level in selected rural areas through increased capacity of the communities to plan and manage their resources, and prioritize, fund, and maintain key infrastructure investments with clear market linkages. The component consists of community mobilization and capacity-building; technical support; and implementation of investment priorities.