Low Income Pilot: Supporting SADC governments' to better service agricultural producers, exporters and international buyers

p> While the private sector has to meet the sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) requirements demanded by their buyers, governments have to carry out important regulatory, surveillance and management functions to strengthen and support this compliance. Furthermore, many importing countries require that a designated public sector ‘competent authority' be in place to perform certain enforcement functions. The public sector is thus the central pivot on which SPS management hinges.

In many developing countries, the capacity of governments to serve as this pivot is absent. These countries often lack the necessary hard and soft infrastructure such as laboratories, legislation and human resources to be able to support the private sector and comply with importing countries' standards requirements.

This component of the RSP focuses on helping low-income SADC country governments such as Mozambique to develop their infrastructure and systems to better support their producers on standards issues. This also provides international buyers with the assurances that the necessary standards are being met. The product focus here is the fisheries sector and horticultural products.

The objective of the low-income pilot component of the RSP is to demonstrate that if you provide a low-income SADC country with the means to develop its enabling environment for standards compliance, this will result in an increase in exports and a concomitant reduction in poverty.