This sub-component will enhance access to and usage of agricultural financial services and value chain financing for smallholder farmers, producer groups, cooperatives, aggregators, traders, processors and other value chain actors. The project will coordinate with financial institutions to establish working relationships, generate understanding of the project’s approach for routing ‘matching grants’ based on a tri-partite arrangement between the project, financial institution and Farmer Group (FG)/ Farmer Cooperatives (FCs). Furthermore, BRECSA will support farming households, FG/FCs and enterprises to improve their financial literacy, entrepreneurial skills and business knowledge to improve their financial habits, financial discipline and investment decisions.

The project will assess existing farmer-support digital tools, their shortcomings and current needs of farmers for developing a user-friendly tool/platform. The tool could tackle issues related to: (1) production and pricing in different locations, (2) commodity demand in different markets, (3) transportation (to link farmers and traders with transport service providers for transporting produce), and (4) any other functionalities under the above four areas identified during the assessment.

This sub-component will undertake policy dialogue to support the promotion of Brand Bhutan’s organic and high-value agri-food products in regional and international markets.

To this end, the project will collaborate with Bhutan Food and Drug Authority (BFDA) in the development of a geographic indication (GI), as well as, provide needed investments for regulation, standardization and certification. BRECSA will also work with the Department of Agricultural Marketing and Cooperatives (DAMC) to revise the rules and regulations of the Cooperative Act and marketing guidelines and strategies wherever necessary to foster commercialization of farming and agri-entrepreneurship development in 4 project landscape Dzongkhags.