Serbia Competitive Agriculture Project (SCAP)

The development objective of the Competitive Agriculture Project for Serbia is to improve agri-food market linkages of targeted beneficiaries. The project comprises of three components. The first component, improving the value-added of agriculture is to improve the productive and entrepreneurial capacity of small and medium agri-food producers, producer groups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to improve their linkages to markets. It consists of following sub-components: (i) strengthening access to agricultural advisory and business development services; and (ii) facilitating access to finance for productive investments. The second component, improving the capacity of ministry of agriculture, forestry, and water management (MAFWM) to support modern agriculture is to improve the capacity of MAFWM and related public agencies to enable improved sector performance through evidence-based policy making and provision of public goods, such as an information delivery system and open data platform. It consists of following sub-components: (i) improving MAFWM information systems; and (ii) developing an agriculture business intelligence information system. The third component, project management, monitoring and evaluation will support the establishment of a project management team (PMT) in the Directorate of Agrarian Payments (DAP) and the capacity needs related to project implementation, including project monitoring, a comprehensive baseline, mid-term review, and a final impact evaluation of project investments.