Project description and activities

Project Coordination

The project coordination component (USD 2 ,651 million) will fund:

• The cost of the Project Coordination Unit, comprising: (i) a small central unit based in Kigali and (ii) three decentralized provincial liaison units. The central unit will consist of a small staff, including a Project Coordinator, a Financial Controller, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, an accountant, a secretary, and three drivers. In the three provincial units, a Project Liaison Officer, a secretary and one driver will be posted;
• The cost of an internationally recruited Advisor to assist the start up of the project for an initial period of 12 months;
• The cost of furniture and equipment for the office space provided by MINAGRI in Kigali, and for the provincial units, office space for the latter will be provided by the provincial authorities;
• The cost of all the vehicles purchased for the use of the PCU;
• A consultants fund to pay for technical and/or sociological investigations, in addition to funds specifically budgeted under the production and marketing components;
• The cost incurred by the RDB to coordinate the establishment of the CPMCCs and NTC;
• The cost of surveys and Workshops required to undertake adequate beneficiaries tracking surveys, and to organize participatory assessment of project impact with smallholder participants; and
• The cost of Mid-Term review, of the annual audit of project accounts, and of the external audit of each established tea and coffee processing and marketing companies for the first five years of their operations.

The PCU and its provincial offices will be funded in full for 5 years. During the first twelve months, until the main contracts with the service providers and with TWIN are negotiated and the service providers operations are in place, the Project Coordinator will be assisted by an internationally recruited Senior Technical Advisor, responsible for assisting the PCU Coordinator in negotiating the contracts. Candidates for the posts of Project Coordinator and of Project Technical Advisor must have a good understanding of the project approach and of the implications of working with private sector partners, as well as experience of implementation of projects funded by International Financial Institutions and demonstrated capacity to take decisions.

By year 5, the agricultural development in tea and coffee will be completed, all the private cooperative companies will be fully established and operational, and the guarantee smallholder credit scheme will be also operational. The services of OCIR-Thé and OCIR-Café at growers level will no longer be required, since the CPMCC and the NTC will be in a position to handle the required technology services through the primary societies. The services required from TWIN will be much reduced, the cooperative development work having been completed, and further inputs from TWIN will be funded by the FT producer support fund. The new cash and export crops will also firmly under way. The number and amount of the PCU financial transactions will be much reduced, most of the work will concern impact evaluation, beneficiary tracking, general reporting, and contracting audits. Therefore, the cost of the PCU can be drastically reduced during the last two years of project implementation. The staff will then only include the Coordinator, the PM&E officer, one accountant, one driver, and one secretary. The Financial Controller will be recruited on a part-time basis. The provincial offices will be closed, their functions, particularly with respect to new cash/export crops absorbed by the DALF as part of their normal duties.

Support to the RDB will be for three years and will include a senior staff member who will be responsible for following up on all aspects related to company establishment, representation of the bank in the companies Board meetings, preparation of procedure manuals for the companies, legal documentation, negotiations with private partners, and for the start-up and coordination of the credit scheme to coffee and tea planter cooperatives, and of the credit to SMEs and farmer cooperative under the new cash crop scheme. The RDB will set up a special office to handle the affairs connected with the IFAD cash and export crop project. Advisors on specific subjects will be recruited as required. The legal and loans departments of the RDB will provide the necessary complement of inputs in the course of their normal operations. After year 3, the bank will be in a position to cover its costs from the interest spread and commissions earned on the operations funded with project resources.

Structure of the component cost. The structure of the basic cost of this component is shown in the table below:

Table 10: Basic cost of the Project Coordination Component