MAP: New Instruments in Agricultural Finance
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in collaboration with the Spanish General Trust Fund, under the MAP program will finance projects and research studies to improve financial and private sector development policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The MAP has launched its 3rd Call for Proposals on March 1, 2012 on the topic: New financial instruments for agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Proposals should be for activities that fund specific interventions aimed at improving financial risk management in the agricultural sector in order to reduce price volatility, improve productive capacities and fiscal stability. These may include activities related to derivative market development, portfolio insurance, credit scoring techniques for rural and public banks, agricultural value chain financing schemes among others.
Two types of proposals will be considered:
1. Activity Grants. Up to 100,000 euros for implementation of activities that include impact evaluation methods and generate lessons learned.
2. Research Grants. Up to 20,000 euros for diagnostics, impact evaluations, comparative studies or case studies, and other applied research leading to policy recommendations.
Projects will be evaluated on innovativeness, ability to generate and empirically document impact, and overall quality of the proposal. The IDB will publish the results of the MAP grants as part of its research publications. Ideally, activities and research grants will be implemented in less than one year.
The MAP will fund activities proposed by government institutions, researchers and others on specific topics through a grant window. For this call, it specially encourages financial and agricultural ministries and public and rural banks to present their proposals and project ideas. Proposals will be evaluated by experts of the IDB's Capital and Financial Markets Division in coordination with the Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) and the IDB's Research Department.
The deadline for submitting proposals for this new call will be May 15, 2012. To submit proposals, please visit the MAP web page and follow the instructions for applying for funds. For further information do not hesitate to contact MAP@iadb.org.