I. Introduction
- Purpose
The present assessment aims at providing an up-to-date picture of the local conditions of production and distribution of three food products used as part of WFP food distribution programs in Tajikistan: fortified wheat flour, pulses and vegetable oil, in order to assess if these products, which are currently provided through imports (mainly from Russia and Kazakhstan), could be at least partly procured locally.
Local procurement aims at substituting all or part of an imported food product by a similar food product grown locally, or by a close substitute. The main expected benefit attached to local procurement is a poverty alleviation effect, through the stimulation of the activity of local and especially small producers and traders. This objective can be reached by buying locally produced goods, but also, applying a less strict definition of local procurement, by buying imported food from local traders. Many challenges are to be expected in procuring locally, we derived the main criteria of the present feasibility assessment from the following questions:
Price: Is the local market able to procure food at a price equal or lower than the WFP Import Parity Price (IPP)?
Quality: Is the local market able to procure food products which comply with nutrition and safety norms of the WFP?
Institutional constraints: Is the broad institutional context stable enough to guarantee mid/long term sustainability of the local procurement scheme (management capacity at facility level, transparency in trade and distribution conditions, and access to loans to develop capacity and improve quality, etc.)?
Potential negative impact on local markets: Another risk linked to local procurement would be to disturb local markets with a massive demand boosts due to large quantities purchased for the needs of WFP programs. This effect could be all the more important if the market for local food products already face excess demand and that local production capacity is limited by investment and institutional constraints.