Locations
Promoting inclusive and sustainable growth
Aid for Trade in Central Asia
Background
The fourth phase of the Aid for Trade project works on promoting inclusive growth in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan through promotion of green productive capacities and competitiveness to support the countries’ efforts to diversify their economies and export baskets and promote trade.
Objectives
To provide support to building ‘forward-looking’ productive and export capacities of the private sector with focus on higher-added value ‘niche’ products and decent job creation, promoting green value chains, with a cross-cutting emphasis on women’s empowerment, partnerships, and innovation.
Approach
The project’s approach is to tackle economic diversification and trade development issues in an integrated manner by working on three mutually reinforcing levels: policy (macro level), trade/business support institutions (meso level) and direct support to businesses/value chain actors (micro level).
- Macro: A more conducive environment for trade oriented private sector development
- Meso: Trade Support Institutions that provide efficient services to the private sector
- Micro: More efficient and competitive producers and processors
Major Achievements
- Since 2014, the project has supported the creation of 5,000 new jobs, including 2,000 for women in the region and supported export contracts worth $600 million.
- The project supported promotion of 9 green and inclusive value chains in selected employment-rich agricultural, agro-industrial and tourism sectors in rural areas of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan through building ‘forward-looking’ and sustainable productive capacities.
- Sustainable solutions were identified and implemented to raise productivity, resource efficiency and added value of target green and marketable niche products/value chains.
- The project has facilitated access of 32 Trade Support Institutions and Business Support Organizations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as over 3,200 SMEs/target value chain actors to cutting-edge trade and market intelligence and enhanced their capacities to use available big data tools to foresight markets and VCs development to be able to capture new opportunities and diversify production beyond traditional export baskets.
- More than 1,500 women empowered through mentorship programs on women entrepreneurship, programs on affordable finance or other forms of support.
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