IDEA-NEW Quarterly Report—April-June 2014

The program's mission is to expand the licit agricultural economy in these regions, improving market access, increasing processing capacity, and catalyzing investments into Afghanistan's agricultural sector. IDEA-NEW's activities support agribusinesses at different points of each value chain, with a focus on commercial agricultural input suppliers as the leverage point for increasing yields, productivity, and quality across the target area and value chains. The program's objective is to facilitate linkages between input suppliers and producers through targeted interventions that improve the ability of input suppliers to provide extension and training to growers, and enhance their business management, administration, and marketing capacities. In the third quarter of FY2014, IDEA-NEW continued preparations for 2014 activities, including holding pre-application conferences for agriculture input suppliers and food processing companies, surveying agricultural input wholesalers, retailers, and farmers on the SMS-marketing pilot project, and conducting a training needs assessment of 148 agribusinesses across all seven target provinces. In May, a total of 98 prospective grantees attended IDEA-NEW pre-application conferences for shortlisted input suppliers and agribusinesses interested in its SMS marketing, promotional materials, and/or matching in-kind grants. IDEA-NEW also facilitated a Business-to-Business (B2B) meeting for two local woman-owned food processing companies with the Finest Supermarket chain on June 25, 2014. The program's no-cost extension narrowed its geographic focus to the Eastern region and concentrated its activities on supporting input suppliers and food processors that operate in the grape, orchard crop, and vegetable value chains. The program's monthly report format was reorganized in February to reflect these changes. IDEA-NEW held pre-application conferences in Kabul and Jalalabad on April 9-10 for the first group of potential applicants—both agriculture input suppliers and food processing companies—who submitted expressions of interest (EOIs) for grants in March. Twenty-four businesses attended the Kabul meeting and 35 came to IDEA-NEW's Jalalabad offices and were briefed by grant and agribusiness personnel on the application process and received the request for applications. By the end of April, 32 input suppliers and food processors had submitted a grant application—15 in Kabul and 17 in Jalalabad. Of these, 10 were deemed suitable for matching and promotional grants and were moved to the next stage in the evaluation process. A further six applicants were approved for training, and the remainder were rejected as their proposals did not meet IDEA-NEW's minimum eligibility criteria. In early May, agribusiness teams in both Kabul and Jalalabad reviewed the proposals of 17 input suppliers—six from Nangarhar, Kunar, and Laghman and 11 from Kapisa, Kabul, Parwan, and Panjshir provinces—who applied for matching in-kind grants, which requires a minimum 25% cost share by beneficiaries. Of these, six were approved for matching in-kind grants, and the remainder were rejected as their proposals did not meet IDEA-NEW's minimum eligibility criteria. IDEA-NEW's quarterly report highlights the program's progress in supporting agriculture input suppliers and food processors in the Eastern region, with a focus on commercial agricultural input suppliers as the leverage point for increasing yields, productivity, and quality across the target area and value chains. The program's activities aim to facilitate linkages between input suppliers and producers through targeted interventions that improve the ability of input suppliers to provide extension and training to growers, and enhance their business management, administration, and marketing capacities.