On June 3, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the World Bank will hold a high-level conference on The Medium- and Long-term Vision: Transforming Agriculture and Rural Development in Romania.
The conference aims to stimulate a broad discussion with sector stakeholders on the current challenges and future goals in the Romanian ARD, in relation to the long term global and European trends.
It will equally serve as a forum for MADR senior management to present the medium- to long- term reform and investment priorities in agriculture and rural development (ARD), going beyond the EU-regulated framework.
At the same time, it will be a platform for widely disseminating some of the main results of the Programmatic Reimbursable Advisory Assistance to the MADR for Strengthening Strategic and Operational Management, which has benefited from World Bank technical support. Several of the knowledge products developed through this Assistance were geared to inform MADR’s sectoral and institutional reform choices; at the same time, a number of pilot initiatives demonstrated the benefits of streamlining and digitizing many of the workflows and procedures within the ARD administration.
The key sector challenges and strategic priorities for action are outlined in the Medium- and Long-term Vision (2020/2030) and in the subsequent strategic documents, prepared by MADR with World Bank technical support. Adopting and implementing the sector vision and strategy documents would constitute a major step forward towards a coherent, far-reaching and stable public policy framework.
In addition, the Romanian agricultural administration also needs to undergo a comprehensive institutional reform, to include the modernization and digitization of its systems and procedures, and the strengthening of its human capacity to better meet current and future business needs.