United States Assistance to Balochistan Border Areas - Evaluation Report - Annex A - Impact Assessment

The project is a direct follow-up to the “Food Security/Poverty Alleviation in Arid Agriculture Balochistan - Pilot Project Phase”, which began activities in 2004 and was completed by December 2008. The current project used the same overall approach as the original project in five districts instead of the three districts included in its precursor project. The current project examined the districts of Killa Saifullah, Loralai, Zhob, Quetta and Mastung. It aims at directly contributing to the Government of Pakistan’s (GoP) Poverty Reduction Strategy by reducing poverty in the border areas and contributing directly to the GoP’s ongoing National Food Security Program. At a more general level, it supports the ongoing government efforts to foster economic growth and stability in the border areas.

The overall development objective of the project is to increase the incomes of poor rural men and women in the 5 districts in the border areas of Balochistan. The immediate project objectives are:

• Build the capacity of poor men and women to raise beneficiary income from increased crop area, made possible by increased water availabilities, increased crop productivity through improved seeds, better technical know-how and increased area under high value fruit plants;
• Raise crop and livestock productivity and increase the scale of crop production by bringing additional area under cultivation by land leveling;
• Build sustainable outcomes through effective impact assessment and strong and durable partnerships with public and private sector actors.

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