Dominican Republic

<p>ITC is currently implementing the micro-level pillar of the EU-ACP Business-friendly programme, which aims to support value chains through inclusive policies, investment promotion, and alliances. The program focuses on strengthening value chain governance and investment, as well as increasing the competitiveness of small farmers and MSMEs. A recently signed top-up agreement extends the implementation duration of the existing EU-ACP Business Friendly programme (B807) by 48 months, integrating additional funding and outputs into the existing initiative. The top-up aligns with the programme&apos;s objectives and will enhance access to value chain finance and sustainable investment. Three new outputs include enhancing access to agribusiness Value Chain finance and a Capacity Building Mechanism to support Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence, CSR &nbsp;and accompanying measure implementation, tailored to OACPS Member States. An initial six-month inception phase define the scope of intervention in the rum/sugar sector and advanced the selection of additional countries that will be included in the ongoing project across all value chains, namely coffee, cocoa, coconuts, cotton/fashion, kava, and rum/sugar sectors.</p>

<p>This project will enhance ITC offerings of global public goods &nbsp; by advancing the development of additional functionalities within the Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway (DFTG) whose development has recently started in March 2024 under the ITC project C374. The DFTG aims to mitigate the potential impact of the new European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) on trade flows between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union, particularly for economic operators involved in the production and trade of the commodities covered by the Regulation.</p><p>The project will enhance and simplify the utilization of the Producers registry by introducing an invitation mechanism. This mechanism will enable EU operators and exporters to collect and compile the farm-level information from their suppliers through the DFTG, facilitating the substantiation of their Due Diligence (DD) statements. Furthermore, EU operators and LAC exporters will be able to issue a DD self-statement document with the information they gathered through the invitation mechanism.</p><p>The new functionalities under development will undergo testing within the same value chain and pilot countries as the Producers&apos; registry.&nbsp;</p>

<p>This project will enhance ITC offerings of global public goods through the development of a tool, the Deforestation-Free Trade Gateway (DFTG), aimed to mitigate the potential impact of the new European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) on trade flows between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union, particularly for economic operators involved in the production and trade of the commodities covered by the Regulation.&nbsp;</p><p>The project will develop a functionality, the Deforestation-Free-Trade Producer Registry, for value chain operators in both European and Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries to gather evidence that the products they trade do not originate from deforested or forest degraded areas. Thus, &nbsp;the Deforestation-Free Producer Registry will gather the farm-level information that the EU operators need for issuing their Due Diligence Statement.</p>