Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP) worth US$18 million, funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), has been in operation in Dhankuta, Ilam, Panchthar, Tehrathum, Udaypur, Jhapa, Morang, Saptari, Siraha, Susari and Taplejung districts. [break]
Its objectives is to reduce poverty through farm commercialization by increasing the yield and market expansion of high value crops such as vegetables, fruits, tea and spices in the region.
"But the commercial agriculture investment and management, which is the biggest component of the project, is lagging behind, meeting only 40 percent of the target, due to dealy in processing sub-project proposals and finding suitable replacements for general manager and company secretary of the main implementing agency," says a report that ADB mission prepared after inspecting some of the project districts in the second week of December 2010.
Commercial Agriculture Alliance (CAA), a non-governmental organization, is the main implementing agency of the project. The project has allocated US$ 10 million, through CAA, to farmer groups for making investments, facilitating operations and management of the agriculture commercialization targeted at farmers level.
However, it has so far disbursed only US$ 1.3 million to the farmer groups out of the targeted US$ 2.6 million for infrastructure and non-infrastructure related programs as at the end of 2010. CAA has been undertaking programs such as setting up market infrastrucre, high-value seed distribution, disease control, production and processing of high-value products, among others.
"More than 60 percent of the project period has elapsed and the pace of implementation of the projects needs to be improved for the remaining project period to achieve the target," states the report. "The progress of the project remains far lower than what was originally expected as the CAA could make investments only in smaller sub-projects at farmers group level," Tek Bahadur Bam, project manager of CADP told Republica.
Despite the slowed progress, the mission has said the project is progressing ´satisfactorily´ in some places. The projects have achieved 56 percent of overall physical targets at the review period. The mission has agreed to increase the size of sub-projects, the report further adds.
Bam said that commercialization of key produces like black cardamom, ginger, orange and mangoes in many districts have seen almost no progress during last three years of the project.
"Project couldn´t deliver visible results in terms of farm commercialisation and even failed to prevent the devastation of black cardamom due to viral disease in key producing districts, mainly in Ilam over three year," Bam said.
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