MCA-Honduras Agricultural Public Goods Grants Fund (APGGF)

The APGGF is one of the four activities of Rural Development Project (RDP), designed to promote the objective of the Rural Development Project of the Millennium Challenge Account of Honduras, which is aimed to increase productivity and improve competitiveness of small and medium farmers. The main objective of APGGF is to finance up to 9 million dollars in grants to support projects oriented to intensify and accelerate the development of market-based commercial agriculture, particularly in the horticultural sector.

These grants will finance initiatives to provide public or semi-public goods according to the following definition:

Public Good: A Public Good represents a non-excludable and non-rival good, and as a result it cannot be profitably provided by the private sector. To be non-excludable means that it is not feasible to exclude its use, and as a result everyone may use the good or service, and therefore the private sector cannot recover investment costs. Non-rival means that one person's use does not preclude or diminish another person's use and multiple users may enjoy its benefits without causing any damage to the utility generated by the good in mention. In order to qualify as a Public Good for the purpose of this APGGF, the good does not need to be completely non-excludable, but the non-excludable condition must be endorsed by a prohibitive cost, in such a way that it would be slightly probable that the good could be provided by the private sector. In addition, the APGGF will favor those goods with particular applicability to Honduras and that are not Public Global Goods.

Quasi-Public Good: A Quasi-Public Good must have all of the following characteristics: (i) Does not meet the strict definition of a Public good; (ii) Has some benefits that are non-excludable and causes the economic rate of return to exceed the financial rate of return; (iii) private costs exceed private revenues so that the financial rate of return exceeds the cost of capital.
In summary, the Quasi-Public Goods must have benefits that outweigh their cost of provision, but the private sector cannot capture sufficient revenues to profitably provide the good.

Invitations to submit applications for grants with a duration from six (6) to eighteen (18) months, which in exceptional cases might be extended to up to 24 months, in amounts between US$ 100,000 and US$ 1 million per grant, will be publicly posted. The operation rules of the APGGF guarantee fair and transparent selection criteria and procedures, and are in accordance with the Environmental Guidelines and other limitations on the use of funding from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC for its English acronym) of the United States Government.

Applicants will first submit to MCA-Honduras a concept paper (profile) on the Project . Applicants with a concept paper accepted by the Grant Committee of MCa-Honduras and by MCC, will be invited to submit an Application for Grant. Each competition grant will be publicly announced and the information will be disseminated as much as possible. After each publication, and prior to the due date for the submission of Concept Papers, a workshop opened to all interested applicants will be held, in order to explain further details on requirements and procedures of the process, and also to provide an opportunity for questions and answers.

See APGGF Operational Manual