Upstream Investment in Central Asia

The IFC, part of the World Bank Group, issued a new program of Upstream Investment targeted at making significant change in a territory’s value chains. We worked with the Europe and Central Asia Agribusiness teams, the country officers and the new Upstream team.

The challenge was to identify large-scale investment opportunities (> US $ 20 M) in the Livestock and Dairy sectors in Kazakhstan and the Horticulture in Uzbekistan that would have a major development impact.

Competitiveness together with a team of leading industry and local experts, carried out in depth analysis, interviews and conducted workshops with the IFC management to:

• Analyse the current status and value chain gaps and the comparative advantages of bothcountries to attract investors.
• Define strategic opportunities for investment and characterize them in terms of market potential, size and investor profiles.
• Issue recommendations on improvement areas that would make investments more attractive and have a better upstream impact.

In Kazakhstan

• Reformulation of investment strategy towards differentiated meat, following modern and sustainable regenerative agriculture techniques.
• The lamb export opportunity was identified, with emphasis on halal markets.

In Uzbekistan

• Identification of opportunities associated to new fruits with high growth and margins.
• Proposal of international partnering strategies for local players.
• Identification and targeting of potential investors.