Enabling the Business of Agriculture Project- World Bank Study Team Visit to India
The World Bank Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, analyzes and monitors regulations that impact agriculture and produces indicators to inform and encourage efficient regulation that supports successful agribusinesses in local and regional trade. The EBA 2016 report covering 40 countries (http://eba.worldbank.org) aims to promote ‘smart regulations’ to support agribusinesses as well as safety and quality control. This report is a step in identifying barriers in achieving the SDGs and aims at putting food sectors and agriculture at the centre of the international community’s response. One of the key features of the report is to quantify the transactional costs of dealing with government regulations. The basic idea is to highlight good practices in regulation of agribusinesses that enable the agribusinesses worldwide. The data for the report has been collected empirically through standardized questionnaires followed up by conference calls and written correspondence and the respondents were chosen from the private, public and the civil society sectors.
This year ICA is collaborating with the World Bank in its expanded coverage of 62 countries to have cooperatives contributing to the report. The EBA team was in India from May 16 to June 1 to test a sub-national approach, studying regulations both at the federal and state level. The selected states for the study were Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha for. In each state, the 12 thematic areas to covered including seed, fertilizer, machinery, finance, transport, markets (rice), land, water, livestock, information and communication technology (ICT), gender and environmental sustainability. In order to collect information on each area, the team met with and surveyed expert respondents in each state and in Delhi. The ICA Asia-Pacific regional office facilitated meetings for the EBA team with with leading cooperatives in India; among others, Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED), and National Federation of State Cooperative Banks Ltd. (NAFSCOB). A team from the ICA-AP regional office also briefed the EBA team on the cooperative sector in India. The EBA team gained important insights into financial and fertilizer cooperatives. Mr. Bhima Subhramanyam, Managing Director, NAFSCOB was able to put across the point that the EBA study while looking at access to finance in India, did not look at the laws and regulations of Rural Cooperative Banks; but did include Primary Agricultural Credit Cooperatives (PACS). Dr. Awasthi, Managing Director, IFFCO was able to share with the team detailed information on fertilizer registration, importing, distribution and subsidy and how they were leveraging the cooperative network to provide more quality fertilizer products to farmers.
