Sustainable income and rural enterprise

The project consists in combining and integrating four existing projects -- Institute of Forestry (-0154), Rapti Development (-0155), Forestry Development (-0158), and Agroenterprise and Technology Systems (-0160) -- so as to focus their resources on a single objective: increasing rural household incomes. The program subsumes $30.8 million already obligated under the above four projects, along with $16.7 million already authorized, but not yet obligated. In effect, the program will continue project activities that are already planned, but will manage them so as to provide more focused and flexible financial arrangements, greater integration and impact, and increased accountability for results. Specifically, the program will: (1) develop a strengthened and more carefully managed monitoring and evaluation plan, which is performance-based and encompasses key elements of the four projects as well as key related activities; (2) conduct a more structured policy dialogue and finance sectoral and cross-sectoral studies and syntheses supportive of such dialogue; and (3) design new support activities in the agriculture and rural development sectors. The program aims at achieving the following targets: (1) sustained increases in private sector sales of cash crop products; (2) private control and sustainable management of farm and forest resources; and (3) supportive agricultural and forestry policy and regulatory reforms.