Nepal Agricultural Markets Development Programme (NAMDP)

Project completed

Semi-commercial small farmers, mostly cultivating less than 1 ha and often from disadvantaged groups, face significant hurdles to participate in agricultural product and input markets, thus failing to tap existing potentials to increase their production, farm income and well-being. Complementary to other Swiss projects, NAMDP will focus on market system development to foster market-led and inclusive growth of commercial agriculture, working with the production and marketing actors.

Nepal Agricultural Markets Development Programme (NAM-DP) will sustainably increase the real income poor and disadvantaged women and men derive from participation in agricultural and interconnected goods, service and labour markets by addressing key constraints in market systems where the poor are present as entrepreneurs, workers and/or consumers. Interventions will focus on improving access to information, access to inputs, access to high-value output markets, and the enabling environment.

Country/region Topic Period Budget
Nepal
Employment & economic development
nothemedefined
Business support & economic inclusion
Tradepolicy & market system
SME development
01.01.2014 - 30.11.2020
CHF  8’950’000
Background

Despite considerable progress in Nepal’s agricultural sector since the 1990s, the conversion to a more diversified, semi-commercial and commercial agriculture remains sluggish, and little value is added in-country. While agriculture market systems function, they suffer from significant imperfections. Transactions are mostly informal, losses are high in the absence of adequate grading, packaging and processing, market places are badly managed, price formation is intransparent and market information limited. Small farmers therefore face high hurdles for market participation, preventing them for improving their production and productivity, and gaining higher and more reliable incomes and improved livelihoods. The government’s recent 20-year Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS) therefore aims to facilitate profitable commercialisation and increased competitiveness for transforming the agricultural sector.

Objectives

Rural smallholders, especially disadvantaged groups and women-headed households, sustainably improve their livelihoods through participation in commercial agriculture and interconnected markets.

Target groups

Beneficiaries: 30'000 semi-commercial and commercial production and processing units increase their additional net annual income by NRS 20'000 (approximately USD 200), of which 30% are women-led units. 2’000 new employments are created for poor and disadvantaged people.

Service providers:

The actors in the selected commodity market value chain and cross sectors will be benefitted through the knowledge and skills on market system development.

 

Medium-term outcomes

Outcome 1: Small farmers and other stakeholders of commercial agriculture, especially from poor and disadvantaged groups, increase their participation in commodity markets and cross-sectors[1]

Outcome 2: Key stakeholders increase investments in value-addition and processing resulting in higher demands for local products.

Outcome 3: Key stakeholders in the market system utilise their newly acquired MSD/M4P capacities to implement positive and sustained practice change in agriculture marketing.

[1] “Cross sectors” refers to relevant issues that have to be tackled in a MSD/M4P approach across all commodity markets/value chains (e.g. grading, packaging etc.)

 

 

Results

Expected results:  

Output 1: Pilot opportunities are realized and bottlenecks addressed in 3 selected commodity markets and 2 cross sectors; Output 2: Expansion and up-scaling as well as replication/crowding-in leads to systemic change in selected commodity markets and cross sectors; Output 3: Relevant policies, legal and regulatory constraints to market development are addressed through advocacy and coordination with relevant government bodies; Output 4: Promising pilot interventions in value addition are realized, if required with additional finance; Output 5: Successful value addition pilots are up-scaled and replicated by producers and market actors; Output 6: Relevant policies, legal and regulatory constraints to value addition are addressed through advocacy and coordination with relevant government bodies; Output 7: Market system knowledge and economic literacy of poor producers has improved; Output 8: MSD/M4P knowledge is disseminated and buy-in is promoted in Nepal's development assistance community.


Results from previous phases:  

NAMDP is one project of the new, more strategic and comprehensive SDC approach – the Nepal Agriculture Growth Initiative – to support the government’s objective of making agriculture more productive and competitive.

The agriculture portfolio of SDC was reviewed during 2012 and the recent SDC project evaluations have confirmed that previous interventions were too production-oriented and insufficiently oriented towards markets and the private sector. Moreover, they were too disjointed and did not address systemic constraints that limit pro-poor change and impact at scale.

At the same time, these interventions proved the potential of increased market participation for increasing incomes and well-being for small and disadvantaged farmers.

 


Directorate/federal office responsible SDC
Credit area Development cooperation
Project partners Contract partner
Private sector
Swiss Non-profit Organisation
  • Foreign private sector South/East
  • Swiss Private Sector
  • Swisscontact


Other partners

WB, DFID, DANIDA, IFAD, GIZ and USAID

Coordination with other projects and actors

NASDP, SIP, ENSSURE, SBLL and MSFP

Budget Current phase Swiss budget CHF    8’950’000 Swiss disbursement to date CHF    7’250’698
Project phases Phase 2 01.07.2020 - 30.11.2024   (Current phase)

Phase 1 01.01.2014 - 30.11.2020   (Completed)