Community and enterprise development

The project"s two components -- village organizations (VO"s) and small-scale enterprises (SSE"s) -- will be implemented, respectively, by PVO"s and a contracted Small Business Advisory (SBA) unit. PVO"s will receive grants to help some 200 VO"s design and implement up to 270 subprojects in such areas as vegetable gardening, food processing, livestock, village woodlots, and fishing. PVO"s will help VO"s acquire the organizational, literacy/numeracy, financial, and technical skills/resources needed for these efforts, using methodologies that will ensure indigenization. Under the SSE component, an SBA unit located in Kaolack will help improve local production of agricultural goods and services by providing management and commodity assistance to more than 675 SSE"s. Project personnel and selected SSE"s will jointly design business improvement plans; assistance will be delivered by project-trained SBA extension personnel. A contracted Management Unit (MU) will be responsible for overall project implementation. A MU Credit Section will manage a revolving credit fund and be responsible for VO and SSE loan approvals and accounting functions; PVO"s and the SBA unit will collect loan repayments. At the end of the project, these credit functions will be assumed by the National Agricultural Credit Bank of Senegal. The MU will also identify Senegalese resources (such as the National School for Applied Economics) to provide VO"s and SSE"s with literacy, numeracy, and technical training. In addition, PVO"s will receive special training in project development, implementation, and management. Amendment of 4/12/89 extends PACD 15 months to 9/91 and extends SSE credit activities beyond the original Kaolack and Fatick regions (formerly known collectively as Sine Saloum) to the neighboring regions of Thies and Diourbel in order to increase the SSE component"s potential for profitability; the component will be institutionalized, rather than incorporated into the formal banking system as originally planned. Project emphases are not otherwise changed, but inputs and outputs are revised to reflect implementation experience and recommendations from the mid-term evaluation. (PD-BBQ-078) Amendment of 8/25/89 extends the PACD to 12/93 and expands SSE credit activities to the Dakar region. The project will establish a sustainable, private, for-profit financial institution in Dakar, which will provide credit to some 1,085 SSE"s during the extension period, leading to the creation of 640 temporary and permanent jobs. The institution, which will provide a model for urban SSE lending, will be organizationally linked to a similar institution in Kaolack. (PD-AAZ-817) Amendment of 6/8/90 extends the PVO component 6 months to 12/90 to allow further institutionalization (the PACD remains 12/93) and, following an audit uncovering serious problems in the SSE component, modifies the latter: instead of two separate SSE credit institutions -- one in Kaolack, one in Dakar -- there will be a single national institution, called the Credit Agency for Private Enterprise, with central management in Dakar. (PD-ABB-258) Amendment of 8/12/92 expands SSE credit activities to include the regions of Ziguinchor, Kolda, and Tambacounda. Additional outputs include 1,750 SSE"s receiving credit and running profitable businesses, and 800 new jobs created. (PD-ABE-629)