Overview
International Trade Centre (ITC) implemented the Pashmina Enhancement and Trade Support (PETS) project in Nepal under the funding from the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) Trust Fund. The overall development objective of the project was to contribute to economic and social development through export growth and market diversification of CP products, manufactured by pashmina exporters in Nepal. The project was designed to achieve three outcomes: (i) NPIA provides sustainable services to its members and CP stakeholders; (ii) manufacturers increase exports in the target markets due to increased international competitiveness; and (iii) new buyers in priority markets recognize CP label as a niche luxury product. The project built a good foundation for the future development of pashmina sector with enhanced institutional capacity of NPIA, NCFT and pashmina enterprises. The project stakeholders felt that the project was able to create new jobs and bring about improvement in working environment in half of the pashmina industries, although it was not project’s mandate or scope of work. These elements deserve adequate space in the new proposal ITC may develop in supporting the pashmina value chain. The midterm evaluation of the project had identified that the project
management was reactive and active in addressing those constraints. The project faced both external and internal constraints that somewhat impeded project performance. ITC needs to continue to proactively consider the use of available local and regional talents to the possible extent in future project designs from cost and time efficiency point of view and conduct a robust due diligence to mitigate factors likely to impede progress in implementation and the delivery of outcomes. The need for additional capacity building, market research and development, and export and sales promotion would require continued funding support to sustain the results and benefits delivered by the PETS project. ITC should design a project based on full value chain analysis of the pashmina sector and seek funding support from EIF and other funding agencies. In doing so, ITC needs to build a complementary alliance with other technical assistance specialized agencies relevant to pashmina wool production and marketing. The funding proposal may also provide serious consideration to introducing an ITC module to strengthen NPIA’s performance and ensuring
regular performance monitoring. Furthermore, there is also a need to assess feasibility of ITC’s positioning with respect to the work of other development partners such as the World Bank and the government’s ongoing programme and activities under different agencies such as Trade and Export Promotion Centre (TEPC), and the Ministry of Livestock Development (MOLD).