SAVI: Strengthening India’s Agricultural Value Chains for Global Trade

Background
India’s agricultural sector, which employs nearly half the population, plays a pivotal role in the country’s economic and trade performance. However, its integration into global value chains remains limited. Structural constraints, including inadequate post-harvest infrastructure, fragmented value chains, regulatory bottlenecks, compliance costs, and market barriers, continue to hinder competitiveness in international markets.

The project “Strengthening India’s Agricultural Value Chains for Global Trade” (SAVI) seeks to address these challenges by identifying systemic bottlenecks, mapping opportunities for value addition, and developing actionable strategies to enhance India’s agricultural trade competitiveness, particularly with BIMSTEC and ASEAN economies.

Project Duration: 12 months

Alignment: This project aligns with India’s broader vision of “Viksit Bharat @2047” and supports inclusive and sustainable growth by indirectly benefiting small farmers, agri-MSMEs, and trade-related institutions through improved policy environments and strengthened market linkages.

To strengthen agricultural value chains and promote inclusive, sustainable, and resilient agricultural trade, thereby enhancing India’s global competitiveness in value-added agricultural products.

This project has been designed with three interconnected objectives:

Comprehensively analyse agricultural value chains from input supply through to export, identifying precisely where systemic bottlenecks exist, whether infrastructural deficits, financing gaps, regulatory constraints, or market access barriers.
Identify concrete opportunities for enhancing competitiveness through technology adoption, processing upgrades, and deeper market integration.
Evaluate trade opportunities between India and its immediate neighbours, BIMSTEC and ASEAN economies, where geographical proximity, cultural ties, and evolving trade architectures create natural synergies for agricultural commerce.

Approach and Activities

The project follows the Research, Public Education, Networking, and Capacity Building methodology with particular emphasis on the first three pillars. By combining desk research and data analysis with stakeholder consultations, the project ensures findings are both analytically sound and practically grounded.

Research

Landscape Study: A comprehensive analysis of India’s agricultural value chains, with a specific focus on opportunities and constraints related to value-added trade with BIMSTEC and ASEAN.
Evidence-Based Policy Brief: Distilling key challenges and opportunities into implementable policy recommendations for government and industry stakeholders.

Public Education and Networking

Between March and September 2026, the project will convene five high-level dissemination and policy dialogue meetings at strategically selected locations:

Yaoundé, Cameroon
Canberra, Australia
Jakarta, Indonesia
Geneva, Switzerland
New Delhi, India

Each meeting is designed to validate findings, gather critical feedback, and build implementation buy-in amongst decision-makers who can translate recommendations into action.

Clear evidence-based articulation of how strengthening agricultural value chains can advance India’s trade interests in BIMSTEC, ASEAN, and the wider global trading system

Identification of specific policy, regulatory, and infrastructural barriers constraining value-added agricultural exports, accompanied by practical and actionable solutions

Strengthened policy dialogue and preparatory groundwork to facilitate potential trade-enabling measures, such as Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs)

Enhanced awareness and capacity among policymakers, trade institutions, and stakeholders to support inclusive, sustainable, and resilient agricultural trade

Coming soon…