The overall The overall objective of the SASME program was to support the efforts of the Government of Egypt to create job opportunities and income generation in rural areas and develop the agricultural sector.
The specific objectives were:
i) to improve access to finance for agricultural SMEs via the Agriculture Development Program (ADP) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR), by increasing ARDF lending schemes as well as their absorption capacity and by establishing a credit guarantee scheme; and
ii) to improve the productive and allocative efficiency of the dairy sector and/or the marine aquaculture sector.
The main objectives of this evaluation were to provide the relevant services of the European Union, and the interested stakeholders with:
• an overall independent assessment of the performance of SASME Program, paying particular attention to its intermediate results measured against its expected objectives and the reasons underpinning such results;
• key lessons learned and related recommendations in order to improve the future Actions.