Kigali - Today on 6th September 2018 at Lemigo Hotel was held one day meeting by the LCF Investment Committee to decide upon which project applications will be considered under the second phase of LCF funding.  LCF (Local Competitiveness Facility) is a matched grant facility to support private business partnerships focusing on value chain integration. Its main purpose is to fund innovative economic partnerships projects to enhance pro-poor local economic development (LED). While officiating the meeting, Mr. NINGABIRE Yves Bernard, the Director General of Planning at MINALOC and Chairman of LCF Investment Committee, thanked participants to devote part of their valuable time on this second phase deliberations to decide on which projects to be funded under the LCF flagship. He called upon committee members to fully participate and make constructive deliberations on LCF project applications while bearing in mind the value chain, innovations and pro-poor criteria. He urged them to freely give their stand and not leave any issue unresolved.   In his remarks, Mr. NTAGENGERWA Theoneste, PSF representative and Co-chair of the Investment Committee, stated that PSF expects LCF to contribute to access to finance issues and value chain development. He added on that PSF shall closely collaborate with LCF in addressing challenges encountered by SMEs. Mr. AHIMANISHYIZE Janvier, LCF Manager at LODA, reiterated that LCF is operational since November 2016 and was established to contribute to poverty reduction in the country by facilitating partnerships between private companies, SMEs and cooperatives to access funding, but in a pro poor perspective and local economic development innovations. Currently, LCF is serving 36 projects in four pilot Districts namely Gisagara, Gakenke, Nyagatare and Rutsiro, and positive changes can be observed. From 19th March to 20th April 2018, private companies, SMEs and cooperatives operating in the aforementioned Districts were invited to compete for LCF funding. According to available figures related to this second call for proposals, 203 applicants expressed interest and 137 of them were found eligible for full proposal stage. From the latter, 120 projects submitted full proposal applications and 59 were selected for  the due diligence evaluation out of which only 45 projects are now submitted to LCF Investment Committee for final decision. All in all, 22% of all submitted projects are selected (45 out of 203) for a total amount of 1,365,343,644 Frw. The recommended projects fall into economic sectors of tourism, ICT, agro-processing, and handcraft, and they have been assessed in terms of Legal Compliance and Governance, Financial Management, Procurement, Auditing  , Human Resources and Organizational Capacity, Project Performance, Commercial Viability, and Own-funding Requirement. After getting through a comprehensive overview of each of the projects, members of the committee endorsed all 45 projects and recommended 20 of them to meet missing requirements by mid October 2018. LCF Investment Committee comprises of MINALOC, Enabel, Districts ES, PSF and LODA.