The agriculture sector has great potential as an engine of growth and poverty reduction in the Pacific Islands region. Governments have a key role to play in enabling the sector to achieve its potential, including through the setting of an appropriate policy framework, and well targeted public expenditure.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) is organising a Pacific Agriculture Policy Planners Workshop with a major focus on agriculture sector public expenditure reviews (AgPERs) to assist governments in the Pacific Islands region in improving agricultures sector policy making.

This workshop brings together agriculture policy planners from the governments of Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, and Vanuatu, technical experts from the World Bank and the SPC, and representatives of international and regional development partners, to improve agriculture policy planning in the region. This workshop consists of two streams:

1. Agriculture sector public expenditure reviews (AgPERs); and
2. Policy, Extension, and Markets.

This concept note focusses on the AgPER stream of the workshop. The World Bank will deliver sessions outlining the impact of appropriate and well targeted expenditures on the sector by government, and how this can be improved through AgPERs. Specifically, the World Bank will explain how AgPERs work, what they involve, how they have been implemented in other regions of the world and their impact.

The key outcome of the workshop will be to enable the governments and administrations, particularly the relevant ministries and departments, to better plan, monitor, and increase the effectiveness of their budgets for expenditures on the agriculture and forestry sector. It is envisaged that the AgPERs will be conducted in the Pacific Islands region according to World Bank frameworks and standards, and be delivered by a partnership of the World Bank and the Pacific Agriculture Policy Project (PAPP), a European Union (EU) funded technical assistance programme implemented by SPC’s Land Resources Division (LRD).

Objectives

1. Improve the understanding and awareness of Pacific Island governments the importance of well targeted public expenditures on agriculture and how it can be improved through AgPERs.
2. Explanation of what AgPERs are, how they are conducted, what they involve, and the World Bank’s experiences with AgPERs in other regions of the world.
3. Identification of Pacific Island government needs for AgPERs.
4. Development of an outline for a work programme on AgPERs in the Pacific.
5. Improve the planning, allocation, monitoring, and effectiveness of agriculture sector public expenditures in the Pacific Islands region.
6. Develop a plan for a Pacific AgPER learning event that will be documented to form the basis of knowledge products.

Background Note - Pacific Agriculture Policy Planners Workshop Sep 2015.pdf

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@

@@