Support to Agriculture SMES (SASME)

The Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR) has received financing from the French Development Agency (AFD) and the European Union (EU), and intends to use part of the funds thereof for payments to a technical assistance services provider to support the National Project Coordination Unit in the implementation of the SASME project’s various components.

The SASME project seeks to improve the livelihoods of Egyptian rural citizens by enhancing agricultural SMEs’ access to finance as well as restructuring two strategic agricultural value chains. The activities of the SASME project can be broken down into the following components:

Component 1: Enhancing access to finance for rural SMEs through the creation of:

a) A dedicated credit fund for SMEs via the MALR’s Agricultural Development Program (an existing agricultural credit fund whose day to day banking operations are managed by an Agent Bank who directs a network of Participating Banks throughout the country).

b) A risk-sharing mechanism (guarantee fund, managed by a contracted Trust Fund Manager) which will help increase outreach to small farmers (without or with only limited collateral) as well larger projects (based on a business plan approach).

Component 2: Providing TA to key stakeholders in the lending and guarantee granting process

This TA aims at increasing outreach, additionality and sustainability of the lending and guarantee schemes. The TA's beneficiaries will include financial and non-financial intermediaries, the Trust Fund Manager, agriculture SMEs and Business Development Service providers.

Component 3: Support to the Dairy and Marine Aquaculture sectors

The Dairy sub-component is expected to improve efficiency of the dairy-value chain in at least Lower and Middle Egypt and will provide TA to small farmers to increase quality and quantity of their production, quality certification and marketing capacities. The Marine Aquaculture [sub-] component aims at improving infrastructure and technical expertise for marine aquaculture in Egypt. This component is expected also to achieve better business and health practices for selected value chain actors.