Maldives: Potential development opportunities for plugging IT, tourism and fisheries industries into the global value chains

Project Background

Through the approach ‘Making Markets Work for Development’ the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) recognises the development of global markets and transnational supply and value chains as offering novel and innovative opportunities for the realisation of development funding.

Objectives

In the context of development programming, Global Value Chain Analyses (GVAs) were carried out to design industrial strategies and programmes to improve a country’s current production capacity and product quality and/or move to higher value-adding products and/or services.

The specific objective of this project was to facilitate inclusive revenue generation and high-quality job creation by developing the tourism, fisheries and information communication technology industries in the Maldives by means of GVC analysis. This analysis comprised a full mapping of the different actors, activities, exchanges and governance structures that make up the GVC.

Activities and/or Results

COFAD participated in the overall study by providing a Senior Fisheries Value Chain Expert, who conducted the following tasks:

• Mapping of the national stakeholders and identification of key qualitative and quantitative indicators at each stage of transformation of the fisheries value chains 
• Economic performance analysis and benchmarking against potential competitors
• Definition of the value chain vision and objectives, taking into consideration the findings of the mapping exercise and of the overall techno-economic assessment 
• Identification and ranking of development opportunities in the chain, complemented by a SWOT analysis
• Enlisting specific interventions to address the constraints to plug into GVC, including policy and regulatory advice, financing & investments, resource mobilisation; capacity development 
• Identification and formulation of specific projects in the fisheries Value Chain that can be developed to address or alleviate binding constraints, including assessment of the feasibility of projects that are ready as business cases