Pacific Islands: Building Capacity to Access New Markets

PHAMA Plus supports access to diverse export markets with the objective of overcoming the following key constraints for many export market system actors:

• Compliance with export market protocols, especially biosecurity, and Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) standards.
• Ensuring reliability of supply quality and quantity to give importers confidence in the supply chain.

PHAMA Plus facilitates changes on the supply side and demand side, and in a business-enabling environment. This is through key market systems stakeholders (e.g., private sector, government, representative bodies, CSOs) rather than directly with farming households. The program uses a purposefully selected blend of direct delivery and market systems development, facilitating innovation and institutional change in the business environment (biosecurity, commodity and market access regulations) and the market system (supply quality and productivity, as well as export and processing pathways).

The program supports selected Pacific Island countries to increase the quantity and quality of their agricultural, horticultural, and cultural exports in ways that benefit producers, exporters, and importers.

The program supports four drivers of women’s economic empowerment:

• Addressing adverse cultural norms against women and promoting positive role models.
• Strengthening visibility, voice and representation.
• Changing business culture and practice.
• Building assets.

The goal of PHAMA Plus is to contribute to improved economic growth and improved rural livelihoods in 200,000 Pacific households of the six PHAMA economies, as well as small island state signatories of PACER Plus. Access to diverse export markets, not just Australia and New Zealand, is the priority objective. PHAMA Plus will be commercially focused, export oriented, and inclusive. It has three end-of-program outcomes:

• Producers and exporters use maintained and new export market access for Pacific export products.
• Women and men exporters, processors, and producers adopt quality and productivity enhancing innovations for their export products.
• Women and men staff of Pacific biosecurity authorities perform their market access facilitation functions better.