Joint mid-term project evaluation -- accessing international markets (AIM) and Morocco agribusiness promotion (MAP) : final report

The two projects have contributed significantly to increasing exports and diversifying markets and products. MAP has helped to generate $13.5 million in exports and AIM, $25.1 million (of which $12.9 million stem from agreements reached under its predecessor projects); most of these exports are either new products or go to new markets. Some 3,000 new jobs have been generated, as all of the assisted export commodities are labor-intensive, using a high proportion of unskilled and semiskilled laborers, about 80% of whom are women. MAP's performance has been excellent. Its lead contractor, Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), is providing thoroughly professional, innovative, and responsive implementation. A number of the planned inputs and outputs are proving unnecessary or unworkable, but fortunately the performance-based structure of DAI's contract (as well as USAID management's flexibility) has allowed MAP to alter its activities in response to promising opportunities. Areas where performance indicators should be adjusted include use of the Promotion and Investment Fund, assistance to privatization, training, and targets for joint ventures. Less positively however, the PASA with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to assist the Ministry of Agriculture is well behind schedule, and the Program Support to Agribusiness component led by the University of Minnesota and Hassan II University is only beginning. In the AIM project, which is implemented by the International Executive Service Corps (IESC), the Business Development Services program, which links field personnel with retired executives, provides an effective and cost-effective resource for brokering new export agreements. The Volunteer Executive program is largely on schedule; most assignments improve the competitiveness of the Moroccan firms that employ mostly women and below-median-income people; however, the short duration of assignments leads to a high percentage of failures' and increased costs. The Moroccan-U.S. tourism pilot program suffered from both design and implementation flaws and has been largely terminated. Also, IESC has failed to provide consistent leadership in the important position of project director, leading to problems in reporting and accounting and lost opportunities for coordinating AIM activities. However, the key professional and technical staff of AIM are impressive in their commitment to their work and their detailed knowledge of and networks with the Moroccan private sector. The two projects cooperate with and complement one another. MAP takes a broad subsector view, identifying access points for leveraged assistance in the production-marketing chain, and working with regulatory, financial, and producer organizations and research, training, and extension institutions as well as with individual firms. AIM is largely a business-to-business operation, responding to the needs of individual firms. Neither similarity of objectives nor duplication of clients have posed a serious problem. It has been agreed that only MAP works in the fresh and frozen subsector, and only AIM in the fish sector. Lessons learned are as follows. (1) MAP has a longer term, more integrated, and dynamic strategy than AIM and thus is overall a better performing project. (2) AIM and MAP significantly influence income and employment and directly affect women and below-median-income people by focusing on agricultural export products in which Morocco has a comparative advantage. This is done most effectively without screens or set-asides for smaller firms, since the largest impact on employment of poorer people comes from assistance to larger firms. (3) Agribusiness projects can be seriously affected by environmental factors. Shortages of water and fish affect both projects, yet neither were considered during project design. Of particular note is a possible ground water level crisis, especially in the Souss valley and the Marrakech plain. (4) Assistance to Moroccan agribusiness has increased the importation of U.S. goods by Morocco. (5) IESC needs to make an effort to demonstrate the impacts of its Volunteer Executive program, which is after all the backbone of its worldwide program