Consultants to support selected project municipalities to develop their "Strategic Vision and Period

Location: Project office in Kathmandu and selected Project Municipalities

Type of contract: Individual

Duration: Sixty-five days (in between 25th Sept. to 20th Dec. 2019)

Background

Geographic diversity of the country has given a good opportunity of growing a great volume of fruit and vegetables in Nepal. With the support from the government and development partners, the productivity has been doubled for both fruit and vegetables in the last 20 years. However, marketed volumes of fruit and vegetables are still low compared to the national demand, which has led to a growing food trade deficit. High rates of losses are occurred at the postharvest stage. Farmers’ limited access to appropriate production technology, efficient crop handling, and fair market etc. are not sufficiently addressed so far. Taking this into account, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD), KOICA and UNDP jointly come up with a project ‘Value Chain Development of Fruit and Vegetables in Nepal’ that aims to increase 10,000 smallholder farmers’ income through improving access to technologies, reducing postharvest losses and enhancing market linkages and marketing mechanisms. This is a five-year project (2018-2022) with USD 5.5 million budget. This is a very small project of MoALD and cannot contribute much in terms of its own investment, however, would like to contribute in key areas which could stir the transformation of agriculture sector that could lead the economic transformation of local government (Project Municipalities).  One of such areas of greater contribution could be the assessment of current status of agriculture sector and formulation of strategic vision and periodic plan of the project Palikas (municipalities). It is in fact not easy to start a good work without a medium term or long term (perspective/strategic) plan of the sector.

Accordingly, it was realized during the earlier interactions with the local elects that reinforcing the executive rights of Palikas in agriculture, need of developing long- and short-term plans (Agriculture Development Strategy or Perspective Plan and Periodic Plan) of Palikas was very essential for the transformation of agriculture sector for the overall economic growth of Palikas. Some of the Palikas have developed their strategic document but agriculture sector had gained least attention. The Local Government Operation Act, 2074 has provisioned for the formation of different committees of assembly as well as executive. On the basis of legal provision, NPC plan formulation model guideline has guided to create five sectoral planning committees and ‘Economic Development Committee” is one of them that includes agriculture sub-sector too. But designated committee for agriculture development was found not active in many Palikas. Therefore, this project wanted to put efforts so that ‘Economic Development Committee’ of respective Palika consider Agriculture as an important sector for their economic growth; which is in line with the provisions of Local Government Operation Act (LGOA), 2074 and would like to provide necessary support to them to prepare strategic vision and periodic plan of agriculture sector.

The federal government have developed and implemented 15th five-year plan from last mid-July. On the other hand, it is necessary to align the policies and plans of local government with the plan and policies of federal and provincial governments. Hence, it is important to develop the periodic plan of Palikas (including agriculture sector) as soon as possible, so that such plan can be aligned with the 15th five-year plan of federal government. Also, it is worth considering the requirements of Local Government Operation Act-2074 (LGOA-2074) while proposing to prepare such plans at local level. LGOA-2074 in its 24th Clause has given the rights to formulate the annual, periodic, medium term as well as perspective plan of different sectors as necessary (as given below in the box). Palika however, should consider the policy, goal/targets, timeframe etc. of federal and provincial government while developing such strategies, periodic plan and annual plan.

As an initial activity, the project organized two workshops (1.5 days each) for the project Palikas where three participants from each Palika (Coordinator of Budget and Programme Planning Committee or the Deputy-Mayor/Vice Chairperson, Coordinator of Economic Development Committee and Planning Officer) were participated. The objectives of the workshop were as follows:

·      Sharing experiences on implementation status of the provisions related to Agriculture Development of the Constitution of Nepal and Local Government Operation Act, 2074 (LGOA-2074) at municipality level,

·      Sharing the experiences on present operational status of the Agriculture strategic and Periodic Development Plans and discuss on the framework (skeleton) of such plans for effective implementation of agricultural programs/activities,

·      To impart knowledge on scope and implementation modalities of Value Chain Development of Fruit and Vegetables project and come in consensus in role and responsibilities of the project and Palikas during the course of project implementation.

The project has given words to the Palika officials that the "project could provide technical expert support to them who want to prepare strategic vision and periodic plan of agriculture sector". Pre-condition mentioned for this support is – (i) the respective Palika should have all the baseline information, (ii) they should organize and actively participate in the focused group discussions and workshops at all level in their Palika, and they should bear all the expenses incurred in those focused group discussions and workshops. Hence, the municipalities who are interested to develop the strategic vision and periodic plan of agriculture sector and fulfil all the requirements to perform the task would get high level consultant support for compiling/documenting the information available and support them to draft the strategic vision and periodic plan of agriculture sector. Tentatively there could be six project Palikas for this period (up to Dec. 2019) where the project may need to provide high level consultant support.

Duties and responsibilities:

The Project would like to enter into an agreement with an individual consultant or consulting firm who will perform the services described below. The aim of this consultancy is to develop the periodic plan of agriculture sector of six Palikas, where three consultants will be involved. Specific activities to be accomplished by the consultant to prepare the periodic plan are as given below:

·         Participate in various orientation/interaction meetings with the project team in project office regarding the tasks to be performed by the consultant and necessary documents to be reviewed. Also, discussion meetings with the project team regarding the basic requirements to draft the periodic plan, steps and processes to be followed in the Palika and general format (skeleton) of the periodic plan,

·         This is important also for clarity and uniformity/similarity in understanding on the ToR and processes and methods to accomplish the task. Also, regarding the baseline information required to formulate the periodic plan and major content of the periodic plan document,

·         Visit assigned Palikas, meeting with respective Palika officials (Mayor/Chair or Deputy-mayor/Vice-Chair or Chief Administrative Officer and Chief of Agriculture Section) and Get required documents and baseline data sets. Review/analyze the status of these data/information and decide whether the information available is relevant and enough to develop periodic plan of agriculture sector. Suggest/request Palika officials for additional data/information collection, where necessary,

·         Develop a detailed action plan of each Palika to perform the task. The action plan would include (i) meetings/workshops date and venue with key informants of various agro-ecological as well as socio-economic niches of the Palika, or ward or cluster level workshops, (ii) meetings/interactions at Palika level where Palika officials including ward chairs and major key informants of the Palika are necessary, (iii) arrangement for data entry, data checking, analysis and typing of document, (iv) draft document completion date and deadline for their feedback; the draft report will also be shared with the project team for feedback, (v) consideration of all relevant feedbacks and improvement of the document and submission of final version, and presentation to Palika officials, where member(s) of the Project Team will also participate.

Expected outputs and deliverables

The expected outputs and deliverables of the consultant are as given below:

·         Final version of Periodic Plans of agriculture sector (five-year period) developed/prepared for two Palikas and a total of six periodic plans by three consultants,

·          A task completion report by each consultant and presentation/sharing of learnings from the Palikas to the project team.

Provision of monitoring, progress control and payment

·         The consultancy service will be as per this ToR. The fees will be Rs. 10,000 (ten thousand per day). Daily subsistence allowance for the field activities (not in Kathmandu) will be paid @ 2500/day which should cover food and lodging while in the field. The maximum number of days will be as specified in the contract letter. The project will reimburse travel cost to the consultants (as per the prevailing public vehicle rates) and as per the approved plan. Apart from this, a consultant will receive Rs. 2,000 as communication expenses during the entire assignment,

·         Project will issue the group accidental insurance policy of Rs 500,000 in favor of the consultants,

·         A maximum of 40% of the consultancy fee will be paid upon the signing of contract and preparatory work for the field implementation. Rest 60% of the fees will be paid upon the successful completion of the tasks and submission of (i) periodic plans of two Palikas and (ii) a satisfactory task completion report.

Competencies

·         Good knowledge and understanding of Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS), 15th Five-Year Plan of Nepal (agriculture part), Local Government Operation Act, 2074 (particularly agriculture part), agriculture part of Nepal Constitution-2072 and other relevant documents,

·         Experiences of local planning process and data/information required for the preparation of periodic plan,

·         Prior experiences of preparing such planning documents at local level,

·         Excellent writing and facilitation skills,

·         Ability and willingness to (i) work with local government, other stakeholders and farming communities, (ii) incorporate feedback of various stakeholders and (iii) work closely with the project team.

Required qualifications, skills and experiences

·         At least Master's degree in relevant field,

·         At least 10 years of professional experience in the field of agriculture planning and development,

·         Past experiences in working with local government and projects.

·         Well experienced in facilitating the meetings and workshops.

Language

Written and spoken fluency in English and Nepali

Interested and eligible candidates are requested to submit updated CV highlighting the relevant competency, expertise and experience along with an application letter mentioning the daily consultancy fee. The application can be submitted via email to info@vcdp.org.np no later than 21st September 2019. Sharing of past work outputs is appreciated.