The development objective of the Second Provincial Agricultural Development Project (PROSAP II) for Argentina is to increase the productivity and profitability of small and medium-size agricultural producers with the goal of contributing to the improvement of agricultural competitiveness. There are three components to the project. The first component of the project is support to pre-investment activities. This component will provide support to meeting provincial eligibility requirements through the implementation of minimum functional institutional development activities and the preparation of a provincial agricultural development strategies (PADS) in each participating province; identifying and preparing subproject profiles and, once selected for support, full subproject proposals; designing, on a pilot basis, regional development initiatives (RDI) to increase the competitiveness of selected micro-regions; and promoting, on a pilot basis, the establishment of public-private innovation networks to develop innovation transfer initiatives (ITI) to exchange knowledge regarding agricultural practices for purposes of improving the competitiveness and market access of small and medium size farmers, as well as for facilitating the link between knowledge institutions and said farmers. The second component of the project is investment subprojects for competitiveness. This component will finance the cost of agricultural competitiveness and/or agricultural productive investments subprojects whose profiles have been approved to receive support, based on their agreement with the project objective and provincial priorities as expressed in the PADSs, and whose detailed preparation reports have been cleared. Subproject typologies to be supported include: (i) public infrastructure and services (with complementary on-farm and off-farm investments); (ii) institutional development; and (iii) pilot instruments, including RDIs and ITIs. The third component of the project is project management. This component will support the operation of the central project implementation unit (PIU) , as well as finance the costs of monitoring and evaluation, special studies, the ongoing strengthening of the PIU's administrative and management capacities, with emphasis on capacity-building measures that promote the adoption of the new conceptual orientations of the project. Special studies will also include an institutional study to be carried out during the first year of implementation to devise structural scenarios that should be adopted to further the mainstreaming of PROSAP II in the secretariat of agriculture, livestock, fisheries, and food (SAGPyA).
