Terms of Reference

Expression of Interest by Short Term Consultants

1. Background

Swisscontact was established in 1959 as an independent organisation by prominent individuals from the worlds of commerce and science in Switzerland. It is exclusively involved in international cooperation and since 1961 has carried out its own and mandated projects. Since it was founded, Swisscontact has maintained close ties with the private sector. Currently, Swisscontact is active in 36 countries with a workforce of over 1,400 people, implementing 110 projects. The organisation is based in Zurich. Swisscontact concentrates on four core areas of private sector development:

  • Skills Development
  • SME Promotion
  • Financial Services
  • Resource Efficiency

The Swisscontact Bangladesh Office is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

2. Prabriddhi – Local Economic Development (LED)

Bangladesh’s economy has been steadily growing over the last three to four decades with GDP growth rates above 5% over the last 10 years. Not all regions of Bangladesh were able to profit to the same extent from the economic transformation that led to this impressive GDP growth in recent decades. Decentralization remains an important element of the 7th FYP. New approaches such as LED are entering the sphere of the local government mission. The 7th FYP recognizes that overall rural development can contribute significantly to economic development of the whole country and thus supports the country’s ambition to upgrade to the status of middle-income country. In recent years, established and democratically elected Local Government Institutions (LGIs) at union, Upazilla and municipal level increasingly have gained weight in national debates on local governance and decentralization. This will possibly support and renew the decentralization process.

Local Economic Development is the capacity of a territory (city or district) to improve the economic well-being of its people and workers.

The Local Economic Development (LED) project, branded as Prabriddhi, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and cooperation (SDC) and implemented by Swisscontact Bangladesh has started an 18-month long pilot or inception phase in August 2018 in two selected municipalities of Bangladesh, where it has two broad objectives:

  1. test the capacity of municipality level institutions and the feasibility of the LED process through municipalities;
  2. based on the pilot experiences, design a scale up phase of the project with a national level anchor.

The objective of the assignment is to adapt LED tools, specifically those ones focused on Private Sector Development to the realities of Bangladesh and provide the project staff and external

facilitators with a capacity to facilitate the introduction of the LED frameworks, structures and processes and implement them in the pilot municipalities and develop training toolkits accordingly.

3. Requirement of Short-Term Consultants

To complete the assignments the project needs several Short-Term Consultants to work on the following sectors:

Consultancy Topic Brief Description of the Assignment
Consultant 1: LED toolkit design
Develop an LED toolkit using global LED instruments and tools inspired among others by the SDC approach and adapt them to the local (Bangladeshi) context.
Consultant 2: LED Facilitation and Capacity Building
Provide training to project and local facilitators through demonstration and coaching using LED methods and principles inspired among others by the SDC approach.
Consultant 3: Public-Private Partnerships
Provide advice on Public Private Partnershipsusing PPP within the LED context inspired among others by the SDC approach.
Consultant 4: Project document development
Assist in the write up of the project document based on lessons learned from the pilot phase to the main phase.
SDC = Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

4. Expression of Interest by Consultants

Based on your competencies and relevant experience if you are confident and interested to take up the abovementioned assignments please fill in the following table and send to us along with your latest CV. You can express your interest for multiple topics.

Name of the Consultant
Consultancy Topic/s
Brief Description of your competencies/experience against each topic
Proposed Daily Rate in (USD/CHF/BDT)
       
       
       
       
       
       

5. Submission Details

If you are interested, please send the above table filled in along with your latest CV to huraeen.ruhi@swisscontact.org by 28 February 2019. Please mention “ EoI- Consultancy in LED” in the email subject line. We will review your CV and daily rate to make a short pool of consultants.

If you are short listed we will communicate with you for further negotiation with a detail Terms of Reference (ToR).