Héctor Hernández Amador, Minister of Agriculture of Honduras and Josefina Stubbs, World Bank representative RUTA’s Steering Committee is integrated by: • Ministers of Agriculture of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama. • Representatives of the following international cooperation agencies: World Bank, IDB, DFID, FAO, IFAD, IFPRI, and IICA. • Secretary of the Central American Agricultural Council. • Representative of the Advisory Council of the Central American Integration System (CC-SICA).

RUTA: Renewing itself and planning its future

RUTA’s Steering Committee met in Washington to assess the work carried out and to plan for the project’s future

The Regional Unit for Technical Assistance – RUTA – is executing the last year of its Phase V (2004-2007). As part of the activities of this phase, over the last few months the Project had a self-evaluation process and two independent external evaluations. These activities are an integral part of the operational closing and will help to consolidate the results during the current phase.

The reports from external evaluations were presented at the RUTA Steering Committee meeting, held in Washington DC (March 12 – 13, 2007). The main objectives of the meeting were to analyze the main results and value added of RUTA during this phase, to identify guidelines for the technical and administrative closing of the current phase, and to discuss in relation with RUTA’s future the conclusions and recommendations of external evaluations

After two days of meetings and discussions among ministries, partner agencies and RUTA staff, and recognizing the support that RUTA has provided to Central American countries and to international agencies working on rural development and poverty reduction, the Steering Committee agreed to ask the Supervision Committee to formulate a new phase of RUTA.

From left to the right: Guillermo Salazar Nicolau, Minister of Agriculture of Panama; McDonald Benjamin, World Bank representative; Mario Salaverría, Minister of Agriculture of El Salvador; and Robert Kaplan, IDB representative

The Steering Committee also emphasized the need for RUTA to reframe its business model, and invited RUTA’s director to promote participation of new partners. For the next phase, and reflecting the new priorities of governments and agencies, RUTA should redefine its organizational structure, its working areas and activities, and formulate a financial strategy aimed at attaining financial sustainability in the long term.

New steps towards RUTA VI

Based on the renewed interest of countries and partner agencies, RUTA has put together a team to formulate funding proposals and to provide new ideas for the next phase.

Supervision Mission

Following the Steering Committee meeting in Washington, RUTA received a supervision mission at its regional office in San Jose (April 23 – 27, 2007). Representatives of international development agencies of Germany (GTZ), Austria (ADA), Finland, and Sweden (SIDA) participated as special guests of this mission.

Taking into account the main recommendations of external evaluations and the results of the Steering Committee meeting, the mission focused on analyzing RUTA’s next steps, identifying actions to be taken during the administrative closing period, defining RUTA’s work plan for the second semester of the 2007, and analyzing the potential participation of new partners as well as their interests and commitments.

The mission confirmed that RUTA is executing its work plan in compliance with the guidelines provided by the Steering Committee and by the previous supervision missions, ratifying the importance and seriousness of the work being carried out by the Project in the region. The mission agreed that the Central American Common Agricultural Policy, and the chapters on environment, DR-CAFTA and Knowledge Management and Communication, will be fundamental to defining the objectives, programs and actions to be undertaken by RUTA in the future, both at regional and national level.

By the end of the meeting it was proposed that RUTA’s institutional model must reflect its inter-agency nature, allowing enough flexibility to maximize the opportunities, and extending its financial base and pool of partners in order to progressively achieve self-sustainability.

Given the above considerations, the baseline settings of RUTA’s future design were broadly discussed and a special work program to formulate the Concept Note for the next phase was outlined. As part of the efforts to identify new funding resources required for the next phase, the Concept Note was presented to IFAD’s Executive Board, and it is expected to contribute to internal negotiation processes among current and new potential partners.

Taking into account its continued and active engagement with RUTA AND, the Supervision Mission agreed that IFAD should undertake the technical leadership of next missions RUTA: TOWARDS THE FUTURE