Introduction
The U.S.-Pakistan Partnership for Agricultural Market Development (AMD) is a USAID funded, four-yearproject that aims to improve the ability of Pakistan’s commercial agriculture and livestock sectors to compete in international and national markets in four targeted product lines; meat, high value and offseason vegetables, mango, and citrus. AMD will act as a catalyst for development and investment in its target product lines by actively promoting cooperation and coordination amongst the value chain actors and ancillary service providers. AMD’s implementation strategy is underpinned by a strictly commercial and market driven approach with a clear focus on strengthening market access for its partner organizations, and to support marketing and sales efforts, both nationally and internationally. The objective of the AMD project is to encourage investments in the four target product lines through matching grants and empower stakeholders by developing synergies among them to accomplish together what they cannot do alone. AMD will support upgrading and streamlining of supply chains, optimization of profit margins, and increase in the participation of women entrepreneurs, ultimately helping make Pakistani meat, high value and off-season vegetables (HVOSV), mango and citrus more profitable and competitive. Main objectives of the projects are:
Project objectives
Increasing the efficiency, quality, and profitability of select product lines through the adoption of best practices in production, marketing, and business organization management, which would make the supply chains more competitive. The project will also facilitate an increased demand for Pakistani agricultural products and support supply-demand synergies between producers and buyers;
Improving market linkages within targeted product lines and developing the institutional capacity of catalytic actors within these value chains. AMD will work with processors, traders, retailers, and ancillary service providers that support the targeted value chains.
The AMD project, in line with its objective of strengthening the supply chain of Meat sector, intends to support the private sector investors in establishing backgrounding farms in livestock industry. the selected firm/company/business service provider will conduct 02 orientation workshops on backgrounding business model in collaboration with the AMD team. The objective of these workshops is to provide guidance to the investors/farmers on technical/financial dynamics of back grounding business. Furthermore, grant support program on backgrounding will also be shared with industry and potential applicants attending the workshop will be guided on backgrounding RFA which has already been advertised.