Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Technical Assistance projects join the AMP market information system
The market information system of the Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP) is developed and supported jointly with APK-Inform company; the system is very popular among the produce market players in Ukraine and other GIS countries. That is why the regular training for AMP and APK-Inform Market Information Specialists, traditionally held in Dnepropetrovsk, gathered the top record quantity of the participants including the representatives of three agricultural TA projects. The training objective was to practice the procedure of information entering and dissemination, the ways to improve the quality of the information, methods of the information analysis in the constantly changing market conditions.
The following items are included in the AMP market information: the database with the online assess for the unlimited quantity of users; web-site www.lol.org.ua and two journals - monthly Agrooglyad, weekly Agrooglyad+. The Market Information Specialists of the AMP and APK-Inform regional offices are the main operators of the market information system; they are constantly contacting the produce market players. These specialists are daily communicating with about 1,000 persons working in the industry. Besides, a great number of the companies fills up the APM market information system through Internet.
The system efficiency and its value are determined, first of all, by the quantity of its active users; it is hard to ensure this without high-quality information. It is very pleasant that more organizations have started to switch to the system recently. For now these organizations are only TA projects, but AMP specialists hope that the cooperatives, associations and other organizations-market players' representatives will also be active and provide real assistance for their founders.
Recently the following projects joined the AMP market information system: the Project of Vegetable Production Development in the southern region of Ukraine (set up in Mykolaiv), implemented by the International Finance Corporation; the AgLogistics Project financed by TACIS EU. The Georgian AgVantage Project is expected to join the system soon. These projects will fill the system with their clients' information and disseminate among them the market information processed by the APK-Inform experts.
Thanks to the joint efforts of the mentioned projects the market information system is becoming an opened and public resource with the growing efficiency and value for the produce market. You can get more information about the system and the based on it new weekly journal Agrooglyad: Fruits and Vegetables during the second international conference "Fruits and Vegetables of Ukraine 2005" on the 5th-7th of December 2005 in Kyiv.