State of Maharashtra's Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project

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The development objective of the State of Maharashtra Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project for India is to support the development of inclusive and competitive agriculture value chains, focusing on smallholder farmers and agri-entrepreneurs in Maharashtra. The project comprises of four components. The first component, enhancing institutional capacity to support agricultural transformation objective is to strengthen institutional capabilities of the nodal government departments and agencies of the Government of Maharashtra (GoM) to more effectively support agricultural transformation in the state. It consists of following sub-components: (i) enhancing institutional capacity of the department of agriculture (DOA); (ii) enhancing institutional capacity of the directorate of marketing (DOM); and (iii) strengthening capacity for reform measures and joint actions. The second component, expanding market access and supporting enterprise growth objective is to: (i) integrate producers in priority value chains, to operate competitively with strengthened and reliable linkages with buyers and markets, and (ii) enhance the provision of relevant technical and business development services (BDS) to support enterprise growth in the agribusiness sector. It consists of following sub-components: (i) support for enhancing market access; (ii) enterprise development support; (iii) access to finance; and (iv) pilot program on urban food systems. The third component, building risk mitigation mechanisms objective is to strengthen risk mitigation measures, including building the capacity of the state to respond to commodity-price fluctuations; developing access and ability of farmers to take considered decisions based on timely market intelligence reports; enhancing access of producers to collateral-based financing at locations close to their farms; and facilitating farmers’ use of hedging instruments through their community based organizations (CBOs). It consists of following sub-components: (i) enhanced market information and intelligence services; (ii) strengthening warehouse receipt systems; and (iii) risk management support. The fourth component, project management, monitoring, and learning is designed to ensure that project activities are effectively implemented, and that progress, outputs, and outcomes are monitored and evaluated, building on experience with previous projects funded by the World Bank in this sector.