With support from the Mekong – Republic of Korea Cooperation Fund (MKCF), Mekong Institute (MI) organized an inception meeting for the project on Sustainable and Smart Agricultural Supply Chain Development in Mekong Countries on December 9, 2021 through online platform. The project goal is to improve production effectiveness and efficiency, reduce post – harvest losses, and increase energy efficiency in agricultural supply chains through cold chain development and smart and sustainable technologies in post-COVID situation in the Mekong countries. The project will work with the target groups in the Mekong countries and will apply various implementing methods to achieve its objectives through a-series of activities including situation analysis study, consultative meeting, training, workshop, implementing the acquired knowledge into the practice by the participants, and knowledge dissemination forum.
To formally launch and kick-off the project, Mr. Suriyan Vichitlekarn, MI Executive Director and MKCF’s representative – Mr. Madhurjya Kumar Dutta, MKCF Coordinator and MI Director of Trade and Investment Facilitation Department welcomed and delivered the remarks to invited 32 delegates from concerned ministries and private sector in agriculture, energy and logistics and transportation from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
Beside the project objectives, workplan, expected outcomes and cooperation mechanism from the stakeholders for successful implementation of the project presented by the MI’s implementing team, Mr. Suriyan emphasized that the design of the aforementioned project focuses on the plan of action for strengthening coordination and synergy within the Mekong counties and beyond under the cooperation framework for greater impacts and complementarity to support cooperation in the seven priority areas of the MKCF. The project will help to identify gaps and support smart agriculture, as well as energy and logistics and transport to maintain and improve long-term supply chain, particularly along the regional economy.
The project’s activities comprise of four core components on a) Sustainable and smart technology for agriculture production supply chain, b) Energy efficiency in agriculture supply chain, c) Smart logistics management for agriculture supply chain and d) Monitoring and Evaluation that will be implemented from December 2021 -May 2023 by Agricultural Development and Commercialization Department, Sustainable Energy and Environment Department, Trade and Investment Facilitation Department and Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Unit.
