Sources Sought Rwanda Trade Facilitation Activity 720-696-SS-SB-00001.pdf

To: Sources Sought (Attachment B) – Small Business Only Reference Number: 720-696-23-SS-SB-00001-RTFA Release Date: 8/29/2023 Response Date: 9/5/2023, 5:00 PM EST

Subject: Sources Sought - Small Business Only - USAID/Rwanda Trade Facilitation Activity (RTFA)

PURPOSE:

Referring to FAR Part 10, FAR 15.201(e) the United States Government, represented by the United States Agency for International Development’s Mission in Rwanda (USAID/Rwanda), is publishing the subject Sources Sought for the USAID/Rwanda Trade Facilitation Activity (RTFA). The estimated range for this activity is $4-5 million dollars over a 4-year period.

As permitted by FAR Part 10, this is a market research tool being utilized for informational and planning purposes. Your responses will assist the our Mission in the development of its acquisition strategy for a possible Request for Proposal (RFP), to be issued at a later date, and in determining whether any type of small business set-aside is possible for this procurement, or whether full and open or other competitive procedures should be utilized. If full and open or other competition is ultimately pursued, responses to this synopsis will be used to assist our Mission in establishing small business subcontracting goals.

USAID/Rwanda is conducting this Sources Sought to identify small business contractors who possess the capabilities to provide services as specified in the Attachment A: DRAFT SECTION C - DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS/STATEMENT OF WORK and to determine their availability, capability, and adequacy. If your firm may be interested in this requirement, is a qualified small business for the NAICS code 541990 (Size Standard in Millions of Dollars is $17.0 according to SBATable of Small Business Size), and has performed similar projects, we request the information specified in the Attachment B: Sources Sought Information. An organization that is not considered a small business under the applicable NAICS code should not submit a response to the Attachment B of this notice.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION:

Please submit your response to the requested information in the Attachment B: SOURCES SOUGHT INFORMATION electronically to Mr. Eriazel Bagabo at ebagabo@usaid.gov with a copy to Mr. Benjamin Lawrence at blawrence@usaid.gov, no later than September 5, 2023 at 5:00 PM EST. Please indicate Sources Sought reference number provided above in the subject of the email. You will be notified once your response is received. However, this Sources Sought will not be construed as a commitment by the U.S. Government (USG) to issue any solicitation or pay for any information submitted in response to this https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/Table%20of%20Size%20Standards_Effective%20July%2014%202022_Final-508.pdf request. Responders are responsible for adequately marking proprietary or restricted information contained in their responses. No basis for claims against the U.S. Government shall arise because of a response to this Sources Sought or from the USG’s use of such information. Specific questions about this Sources Sought should be directed only to the email addresses identified above. This office will not respond to any telephonic or other inquiries regarding this notice.

Please note USAID/Rwanda is not seeking technical or cost proposals at this time. Do not submit any proposal in response to this Sources Sought. Only the information as requested in Attachment B as applicable will be considered.

Very best regards, Benjamin Lawrence Regional Supervisory Contracting and Agreement Officer USAID / Rwanda and Burundi

CONTENT:

Attachment A – DRAFT SECTION C - DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS/STATEMENT OF WORK

Attachment B – Sources Sought Information

Attachment A: DRAFT SECTION C - DESCRIPTION/SPECIFICATIONS/STATEMENT OF WORK

C.1 INTRODUCTION

USAID/Rwanda’s Economic Growth Office intends to support the efforts of the Government of Rwanda (“GoR”) to contribute to creating a trade-enabling environment through identifying and reducing non-tariff barriers to trade, strengthening soft infrastructure, and building more transparency and efficiency into the trade regulatory system.

In congruence with USAID/Rwanda’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (“CDCS”) 2020- 2025, the Feed the Future Rwanda Trade Facilitation (FTF-RTF) activity contributes to achieving Development Objective 3, specifically the intermediate results 3.1: Enabling environment for private sector strengthened and 3.2.3: Expanded access and responsiveness to markets.

This contract aligns with the Government of Rwanda’s (GoR) National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) and the Vision 2050, where the GoR is committed to building a larger market that will foster cross-border and intra-Africa trade and strengthen the region and continent by harmonizing trade facilitation policies and practices to ease movement of goods from Rwanda to different market destinations. Both strategies acknowledge the importance of international trade to its continued economic development, and it commits to expanding regional and global trade connections.

This Contract will also support U.S. foreign policy goals of expanding opportunities for American businesses in the region and is aligned with the U.S. Embassy's Integrated Country Strategy Mission Goal Three: increasing economic growth and strengthening human capital.

The Contractor will ensure collaboration with other development partners in the trade facilitation space, including the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom, The World Bank, the German development agency (GIZ), the Kingdom of Netherlands, and the European Union

(EU).

C.2 BACKGROUND

C.2.1 General Background Information and Country Context

Rwanda is a small but growing market, with a population of nearly 13 million people and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP, Current) of $10.354 billion, according to the World Bank. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Rwanda enjoyed strong economic growth, averaging over seven percent GDP growth annually over the last two decades. The Rwandan economy grew more than nine percent in 2019.

All international trade is conducted by air or road from the ports of Mombasa in Kenya or Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Air transport is expensive, and the long road transit from these distant ports is encumbered by frequent delays, numerous weigh points, and high costs. These constraints are relevant for agricultural imports, such as fertilizers and seeds, which are often bulky or heavy and have a relatively low value. Rwanda clearing agents do not have direct access to these ports and need to work through a third party, which adds to the risk and high cost of trade. In addition, Non-Tariff Barriers to trade (NTBs) add to high transportation costs and are seen as a larger barrier to trade in East Africa than tariffs and other direct costs. NTBs include long administrative procedures, technical regulations, lack of coordination among trade facilitation agencies, restriction to use private bonded warehouses, high cost of import permits for food products, and the violation of agreed rules of origin.

C.2.2 Development Challenges

C.2.1.1 Trade Facilitation Challenges

Rwanda is landlocked and has no links to regional railway networks, most imports and exports are shipped by road from the ports of Mombasa (Kenya) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), a distance up to 1,500 km. Commercial traffic to and from the ports is subject to frequent delays, numerous weigh points and high transportation costs. These hindrances can cause unpredictable delays when importing or exporting goods into the country. Coordination among trade facilitation institutions is still a challenge in Rwanda, where different scattered GoR agencies have cumbersome requirements for companies involved in international trade. Trade facilitation services are currently assumed by various institutions including the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM), the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA), Rwanda Standards Board (RSB), Rwanda Inspectorate, Competition and Consumer Protection Authority (RICA), the Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority (RFDA) among others, these remain poorly coordinated, and are always changing mandates which disrupts the private sector firms engaged in International Trade. For example, RICA, RSB and RFDA all have mandates to ensure product quality and safety of consumers, however, their mandates overlap and sometimes duplicate roles which greatly affect cross-border traders who have to comply with multiple regulations. The FTF-RTF activity must work to improve coordination among the different public entities involved in the goods’ inspection and clearing process, conduct trade regulatory agencies mapping where Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) overlap and to rationalize/harmonize the SOPs, to ensure that each agency will retain its regulatory obligations.

C.2.1.2 Non-tariff barriers (NTBs)

NTBs add to high transportation costs and are seen as a larger barrier to trade in East Africa than tariffs and other direct costs. NTBs include corruption as well as long administrative procedures, technical regulations, lack of coordination among trade facilitation agencies, restriction to use private bonded warehouses, high cost of import permits for food products, and the violation of agreed rules of origin.

One NTB relevant to agricultural products are non-harmonized sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) requirements, which involve the application of food safety and animal and plant health regulations. As an example, Tanzania requires compliance to its specific national SPS standards for some agricultural imports, even though the country has agreed to the harmonized East African Community (EAC) SPS standards of 2016; meaning Rwandan exporters are required to comply with the harmonized EAC SPS standards as well as the specific requirements to Tanzania. Thus, the new FTF-RTF activity must continue to facilitate and support to the country’s trade facilitation committee engagement and negotiation with its counterparts in the EAC region on raised NTBs and to strengthen access by the traders to NTB reporting systems to ensure timely and effective way of dealing with reported NTBs.

C.3 OBJECTIVES

The contract’s overarching goal is to reduce the time and cost of trading across borders from and to Rwanda.

C.3.1 Expected Target Goals:

1. Cost of trade reduced by at least 10% in total costs associated with cross border trade procedures.

These include compliance to border procedures, cost of obtaining, preparing, and submitting documents during port or border cargo handling, customs clearance and inspection procedures.

2. Time needed to import, export and transit goods through Rwanda customs or inland ports reduced by at least 30%. The time for border compliance includes time for obtaining, preparing, and submitting documents during inland port or border handling, customs clearance, and inspection procedures.

To accomplish these goals, the contract has two objectives:

Objective 1: Reduce NTBs to trade through developing and implementation of NTB elimination strategy.

Expected Target Results:

● At least 15 NTBs are removed as a result of activity assistance,

● At least 5 new or adapted trade enabling environment policies analyzed, consulted on, drafted or revised, approved, and implemented with USG assistance,

● Hold at least 10 exporters and importers forums meetings to identify major NTBs.

Relevant Indicators:

● Average time (in hours) to export goods along trade corridor receiving USG assistance,

● Number of World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement provisions supported by USG assistance,

● Person hours of USG-supported training completed in trade and investment.

C.3.1.1 Deliverables for Objective 1:

The Contractor must provide the necessary technical assistance and guidance to improve the trade enabling environment in Rwanda.

● Prior to implementation of interventions, the Contractor must identify, prioritize, and analyze gaps in existing trade policies, regulations, guidelines and international trade procedures to facilitate reforms for improved trade competitiveness,

● Strengthen the institutional capacity of GoR institutions to modernize trade regulation and policy environment for international trade through capacity building for trade facilitation actors involved with NTB identification and elimination.,

● Raising awareness of policy and process changes among affected traders,

● Improve coordination and communication among the different entities involved in the goods inspection and clearing process, both domestic and regional counterparts,

● Support trade facilitation institutions to participate in bilateral meetings with EAC, Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in advocating for the elimination of identified NTBs,

● Establish a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) between the Rwandan, Kenyan and Tanzania customs agencies to grant Authorized Economic Operators (AEOs) from one country the same status in the other country.

FTF RTF activity interventions under this objective must respond to the following criteria:

● Facilitated national policies and strategies are harmonized with relevant trade regional policies,

● Build on planned regional integration efforts, taking advantage of strides being made and planned efforts to harmonize agricultural trade related policies and standards,

● Generated evidence-based policy analysis supporting necessary subsequent reforms by GoR entities must be developed through the active participation of the relevant private sector organizations and GoR entities,

● Leverage and expand the use of strategic existing policy dialogue platforms to ensure active participation of the private sector and GoR entities to inform trade policy reforms.

Objective 2: Support GoR trade facilitation actors to automate service provision to traders and bolster a transparent trade regulatory system.

Expected Target result:

● Enhance the use of the Electronic Single Window system by automating all trade transactions procedures (export, & import and transit) to at least 100%,

● Reduce in border fees by a minimum of 10% and time to clear goods in customs reduced by a minimum of 30% from the baseline,

● Number of import, export and transit documentations reduced by at least 20%.

Relevant Indicators:

● Number of documents required to export/import goods across borders decreased as a result of

USG assistance,

● Person hours of training completed in trade and investment capacity building supported by USG assistance,

● Number of days of USG supported technical assistance in trade and investment capacity provided to counterparts or stakeholders.

C.3.1.2 Deliverables for Objective 2:

The Contractor must provide the necessary technical assistance to ensure a paperless trade system fully utilized by the international trade community.

● Build the capacity of the users of the Electronic Single Window, including traders associations, clearing agents, Authorized Economic Operators (AEOs), and the RRA customs department to improve the efficiency in processing cargo through customs.

● Facilitate and support the development, update and publishing of the annual time release studies, which is a standardized way to identify inefficiencies in turnaround time of goods at ports.

FTF RTFA Interventions under this objective must respond to the following criteria:

● Within a defined timeline, the interventions intended to build institutional capacity of GoR entities including RDB, RICA, RFDA, RRA, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MINAGRI), etc., must demonstrate its direct linkage and immediate effects into targeted outcomes to reduce time and cost of trading.

● Capacity building interventions, including training modules for relevant GoR institutions shall be determined collaboratively with industry players and private sector associations involved in international trade.

The Contractor must prioritize and integrate a market system led approach in the provision of technical assistance to improve trade regulatory environment by identifying critical activities that address customs clearance delays.

C.4 IMPLEMENTATION PARAMETERS OR REQUIREMENTS

C.4.1 Partnership with GoR

The Contractor must work closely with relevant GoR entities to ensure it is closely aligned with the Government’s NST and sector strategies and policies. The Contractor must collaborate with National Agriculture Export Development Board (NAEB), RDB, MINICOM, RFDA, RICA and MINAGRI.

The Contractor must build upon existing GoR and private sector trade facilitation platforms, while ensuring inclusive participation of women, youth, and persons with disabilities among the traders' association.

The Contractor must facilitate the transformation of these platforms towards financially self-sustainable and demand driven agendas that involve active participation of the private sector and be results oriented with measurable, long-lasting impacts on the field.

C.4.2 Collaboration with Other FTF USAID Activities

The Contractor must collaborate closely with other FTF activities in areas that correspond with achieving the activity’s objectives. The FTF activities and areas where the Contractor must collaborate are as follows:

The FTF RTF activity and FTF RTF activities have complementary technical scopes. The FTF RTF activity is dedicated to creating a trade-enabling environment through identifying and reducing non-tariff barriers to trade. On the other hand, USAID/Rwanda’s activity Kungahara Wagura Amasoko (KWA) focuses on policy reform aimed at facilitating increased agriculture exports and mobilizing private investments in the agricultural export industry. Thus, FTF RTF activity will work towards simplifying cross-border trade procedures for high value agriculture exporters, this will directly contribute to an increase of high value agricultural export value and volume which is one of KWA’s standard indicators.

The Contractor must learn and build upon the existing work by the USAID-funded FTF Modernizing Agriculture activity to identify and assess policy constraints to facilitate importation and exportation of agricultural inputs and machineries. The FTF RTF activity’s trade policy reforms will build on the efforts and complement work undertaken by the FTF Modernizing Agriculture activity to strengthen the enabling environment to foster market driven agriculture.

The Contractor must collaborate with the USAID FTF Employment and Entrepreneurship activity, to assess skills gap which exist in trade facilitation space and contribute to building a pool of trade facilitation experts with diverse skills ranging from exhort import food inspectors, clearing and forwarding agents, The Contractor’s collaboration with the other FTF activities mentioned above will be supported by the USAID PROSPER Project Manager and the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) who will work to facilitate an effective coordination structure that will inform work planning process and field interventions and foster learning.

C.4.3 Coordination with Other Related Donor and GoR Funded Activities

Donors such as the FCDO, the Kingdom of Netherlands Embassy, EU and GIZ are supporting GoR in a diverse range of trade facilitation projects. For example, FCDO is co-funding feasibility studies and construction of trade ports on the lake Kivu, GIZ supports GoR to participate in free trade negotiations in the areas of trade in goods and services, trade facilitation, as well as on the investment protocol.

The Contractor must facilitate strategic coordination with the above donors’ programs and with GoR projects for greater cohesiveness and leveraging of resources.

C.4.4 Engagement with the Private Sector

USAID/Rwanda has committed to collaborating with the private sector in alignment with the USAID Private Sector Engagement Policy published in December 2018. The Contractor must closely collaborate with and consult private sector actors in Rwanda to identify gaps in the trade facilitation systems and highlight priority areas for public-private cooperation for possible solutions.

C.4.5 Inclusive Implementation Approach

Given the activity’s objective in facilitating a trade policy reform agenda and the capacity development agenda of GoR agencies, the Contractor must integrate early on, starting in the inception phase, a collaborative and inclusive process of identifying and analyzing priority policy actions and planning of activity interventions with relevant government ministries and agencies, private sector, and civil society organizations.

C.4.6 Target Beneficiaries

The FTF RTF activity will benefit the entire ecosystem of trade facilitation actors including the private sector companies involved in agricultural trade; the business associations and umbrella organizations and GoR entities that are tasked with facilitating trade like RRA, MINICOM, clearing and forwarding agents, MINAGRI, RICA and RFDA. The RTFA will benefit part of the agribusiness ecosystem, including the trading agribusinesses, transporters, distribution, and logistics companies.

While farmers are not the direct targeted beneficiaries of the activity’s interventions, they will ultimately benefit from reduced trade costs and increased trade volume.

C.4.7 Cross-Cutting Considerations

C.4.7.1 Geographic focus

The FTF RTF activity has a nationwide scope and will work with trade facilitation institutions in the GoR and the private sector, including: the RRA, MINICOM, RFDA, MINAGRI, RICA, clearing and forwarding agents, importers, exporters, and others.

C.4.7.2 Sustainability

Sustainability must be considered a top priority. Therefore, the Contractor must facilitate collaboration between GoR institutions under existing internal coordination platforms and ensure the sustainability plan on how the partner institution will sustain all IT solutions/platforms and other investments once the activity ends.

C.4.7.3 Local Capacity

In line with the Agency Localization Initiative, USAID/Rwanda emphasizes the importance of the utilization of local systems and organizations. The Contractor’s interventions must adequately prioritize and plan to deliver the majority of assistance through existing local or locally based consultancy, Information Technology firms, business development service providers and/or local research organizations, while building their managerial capacity(ies) to ultimately enter into direct agreement with USAID/Rwanda and/or directly receive USAID-funding. Partnerships with local organizations, business management, trade law, information technology related firms must be used to the maximum extent practicable.

C.4.7.4 Gender Integration, Youth and Persons with Disabilities

The Contractor must ensure that women and men (over 29 years old), youth (between 15-29 years old) and persons with disabilities are equally eligible for technical assistance and other benefits provided under the activity. The Contractor must conduct a gender and social inclusion assessment of the opportunities and challenges faced by women, youth and persons with disabilities in regards to trade facilitation. The Contractor must build on the challenges identified and recommendations from this assessment to develop a comprehensive and practical gender and social inclusion strategy that will guide the contractor’s approaches and allocation of resources for effective integration of this part of the population into the interventions.

These approaches include ensuring and tracking active youth and women, including persons with disabilities’, representation within trade facilitations actors and participation in trade facilitation committees and advocacy efforts. In particular, the Contractor must collaborate with other FTF activities to facilitate linkages with private firms that ensure transfer of skills, knowledge and job opportunities with the youth, women, and persons with disabilities.

All data collected will be disaggregated by sex and age, and gender standard or custom indicators will be used where appropriate. To the extent possible and practical, disaggregation by persons with disabilities will be considered.

The Contractor must not seek to bias investment or support to women at the expense of men, but a gender and social inclusion integration strategy must be developed to ensure equality of access to interventions.

C.4.7.5 Digital information systems and tools integration

Where relevant, and as part of the technical assistance, the Contractor must work to integrate and undertake development of innovative, cost effective and flexible digital systems and tools needed to ensure strategic information flow within and between diverse relevant beneficiary entities for timely decision making. The mission is in the process of conducting Digital Ecosystem Country Assessment (DECA) to help USAID/Rwanda integrate digital development tools and approaches into existing activities and future activities. The Contractor must use to the extent possible outcomes from DECA to optimize integration of digital information systems and tools in the FTF RTF activity.

C.4.7.6 Collaboration, Learning and Adapting (CLA) strategy

The Contractor must liaise with the PROSPER Project Manager, or designate, and the COR to convene learning and information exchange meetings of USAID Feed the Future implementing partners, to inform USAID priority policy advocacy points and prioritization of agriculture trade related policies.

Starting in Year 2, the Contractor must include in its work plan annual coordination events “pause and reflect” sessions aimed at enhancing joint learning from activity implementation.

In addition, the Contractor must incorporate a learning and adapting approach that: a) generates, captures, shares, and applies information and knowledge to support and improve development outcomes; b) promotes collaborative learning and exchanges with relevant institutions, stakeholders, and development partners; and c) uses information to improve the cost-effectiveness of interventions over the life of the activity. The Contractor must build on lessons learned from current or existing FTF related activities that have demonstrated successful market system approaches and policy reforms facilitation to achieve the overarching goal of reducing time and cost of trade.

The Contractor must develop customized indicators, to be approved by the COR in the monitoring, evaluation, and learning plan, that demonstrate attribution and contribution of the activity towards the results of the FTF RTF activity and can be used to demonstrate to the GoR how the intervention is contributing to reducing time and cost of trade.

[END OF SECTION C]

Attachment B: SOURCES SOUGHT INFORMATION

Sources Sought Information (For Small Business Respondents ONLY):

I. Cover Page with Business Information – does not count in page limit

1. Company/organization name and website

2. Affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners, and potential teaming partners

3. Year the firm was established and number of employees

4. Two points of contact (names, titles, phone numbers and email addresses)

5. UEI / SAM number and CAGE Code, as registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) at http://www.sam.gov/

6. Has your company ever provided services in Sub-Saharan Africa?

a. Yes

b. No

7. Does your company qualify as a Small Business under NAICS 541990?

a. Yes

b. No

8. Small Business designation/status (must correlate with SAM registration):

a. Small Business

b. Small Disadvantaged Business

c. Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business

d. HUBZone Small Business

e. 8(a) Small Business

f. Women-Owned Small Business

g. Veteran-Owned Small Business

h. Other

i. Not Applicable

9. Is your company eligible to receive awards under the 8(a) Program?

a. Yes

b. No

10. After careful review of the size and scope of this activity described in Attachment A of this document, do you intend to submit an offer if this solicitation is posted?

a. Yes, as a Prime

b. Yes, as a Sub-contractor

c. No

II. Organizational Capacity Questions (Please limit responses to 2 pages)

Provide a brief summary (two pages) describing your organizational core technical and structural capabilities by providing examples of the relevant projects within last 5 years describing:

● Past experience within the areas identified within Attachment A (including reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade),

● Past experience with improving soft trade portals/platforms1, and technical skills working with trade facilitation actors (such as host government, traders, civil society organizations, etc.) in similar operating environments to that of Rwanda (preferably within East Africa).

The above examples should include the following information (within the past 5 years):

● Summary of results achieved and entities served

● Models of implementation

● Organizational capacity

● Staffing

● Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

● Strengthening the capacity of local entities

● Experience with USG funding including size, lengths and type of awards, and relationship (sub or prime awardee)

Firms are encouraged to closely review the draft SOW in the Attachment A and provide information with examples of past experience related to all areas described above.

The USAID/Rwanda will not review any information, including attachments, beyond two (2) pages.

1 For example: an online portal where trade facilitation institutions can process import and export documentation virtually.