In Tegucigalpa, the mission had meetings with SAG, SEFIN, and the President’s Office. In addition, during a video conference held on December 13, 2011, the team presented the latest project achievements.

The project technical team (UCP/SAG) organized four calls for producer organizations (PO) to present business profiles since March and three calls for service providers to qualify for the roster of service providers to producer organizations. The project received 104 business profiles from POs. 76 have been approved to go on to the stage of business plan formulation. 21 did not qualify. There are still 7 to evaluate. Eight business plans were received and approved. For two of those, the funds have been transferred to the joint OPRCOMRURAL account.

The goal for the year was 30 business plans approved and financed. So the project team did not meet its objective. The reason has been traced to delays in signing of contracts with service providers as well as lack of capacity of the service providers to formulate demanding business plan documentation.

A large share of the proposals received are for specialty coffee (64 out of 104). We therefore agreed that the next call for proposals will not be open for coffee, in order to promote other value chains. Because of the large number of profiles in the pipeline, the recommendation is to postpone the next call for proposals until the end of January, and for the UCP/SAG to concentrate on the development of business plans through the service providers.

The World Bank
Public Disclosure Copy
Report No: ISR5023