Samriddhi

Samriddhi Project Document
rural areas and expand their services for rural producers in terms of technical advice and
knowledge, delivered through the LSPs.
The LSPs play a crucial role in distributing the knowledge from the government extension
agencies to the individual farmers and rural MSEs. Through policy dialogue, the project works
towards the recognition of the importance of the LSPs as a link to reach the communities by the
line agencies. In the project’s vision, the line agencies are committed to build their capacity and
provide them with knowledge and information.
As a first step towards the institutionalisation of the local service provision market, the LSPs
have formed associations (SPAs) consisting of different types of LSPs in all Upazillas covered
by the project. The SPAs are seen as the key players in leading the local service provision.
They are the appropriate actor to establish linkages between their members and government
agencies and private companies for capacity building and input procurement. On the other
hand, they have the capacities to effectively and efficiently organise service transactions at local
level. Furthermore, the SPAs strengthen the commercial attitude of their members and are
engaged in the promotion of their business at community and Union level. They also contribute
to expand the outreach of LSPs to new groups and people.
CBOs and MSEs are still financially supported by the project to buy services from LSPs / SPAs.
Usually, the project supports training, i.e. it contributes to the service fees of LSPs when the
CBOs or cluster platforms organise learning sessions at community level. This support will be
phased out in the planned phase.
In order to facilitate the SPAs to get access to capacity building support for the LSPs, the project
established a number of regional resource pools (RRP). The RRPs will continue to contribute to
the strengthening of local service providers’ skills, as well as providing them with up-to-date
information. The pools will be extended to local extension agents and increasingly include
private sector actors. At the same time they will become more informal, taking the form of a pool
of experts and less of a formalised platform. The project will still play a role of facilitation
between SPAs and resource pools, but will withdraw its support in the medium term.
Other market actors
Besides the local MSEs and LSPs, other market actors like buyers, trader associations, input
companies, processors and retailers play an important role to rural economic activities more
viable and to strengthen rural value chains. During the last phase, the market actors have
become key partners of the project. They took over some functions that were previously
exclusively ensured by the project such as technical training of producers, information on quality
inputs, demonstration plots, establishment of collection centres, provision of market information,
etc. Some of the companies have established contracts with producers ensuring the provision of
inputs and buy-back guarantees.
So far, the projects sustain the linkages between producers and market actors, though a few of
them have established or maintain direct links without the involvement of project. In the future,
the project will increasingly work in partnership with market actors since they are a vital part of
the market system.
Intercooperation Bangladesh Page 14