Israeli Green Line Standards Requirements

 

Project Description

Palestinian Shippers’ Council (PSC), PalTrade and PFI are partnering to implement the project titled “Creating a Competitive Edge of the Palestinian MSMEs in the Local and Potential Export Markets” in West Bank and Gaza.

The Project aims to increase the capacity of MSMEs by targeting selected priority sectors/products to increase their market share locally and internationally. A key factor hindering export competitiveness has been the high transaction cost involved in exports. Transaction cost related to trade involves a host of regulatory requirements, procedures and compliance measures; besides infrastructure-related cost- including transport cost to bring product to the border, time and money spent in ports on border procedures, international transportation costs and communication costs. Along with this, documentation has become an additional burden. The Design of the project focuses mainly on improving the competitiveness of the selected companies on a firm/industry level, where the project implementing partners will employ their resources in favor of the project’s objective to help the targeted companies meet markets’ needs.

Title Assignment:

Building the capacities of 7 selected companies to meet mitigate problems and issues that may face Palestinian companies with the Israeli Standards Institute to qualify them for the Green Line Criteria. This is to be the first phase and the final number of selected companies will be 35 Palestinian companies.

 

Objective of the Assignment:

The objective of the assignment is to build the capacities of the first 7 selected Palestinian companies to meet the criteria set by the Israeli Standards Institute. The capacity of the Palestinian companies need to be built to meet the Israeli criteria and enable the Israeli firms to expand their markets into Israel.

Tasks:

The consultant is required to fulfil the following tasks:

1. Review relevant and available literature related to the Israeli Standards Institute in Israel. A report is to be submitted summarizing the literature related to the task.
2. Meet with selected 7 Palestinian companies to evaluate their performance and obstacles facing them in regards to penetrating the Israeli markets. The selection of the companies will be made by PSC.
3. Draft an action plan specific to the needs of each firm on how that Palestinian company may meet the criteria for Known Trade list in Israel and Jordan. The consultant is required to draft 7 separate action plans, one per firm, to be tailored to meet the beneficiary’s needs. The plans are to be submitted for PSC approval.
4. Build the capacities of the Palestinian firms to mitigate the problems and issues that the firms face with the Israeli Standards Institute, coach the selected companies to ensure that they qualify. The consultant is to visit each of the 7 firms and coach each one and follow up on their implementation of the specific related action plan
5. Submit a final report on the ability of the companies to meet the criteria

 

Deliverables:

The consultant is to submit the following reports for approval:

1. A summary literature review on the available literature related to the Israeli Standards Institute in Israel. The report should highlight key issues related to Palestinian firms and a general plan on how to mitigate the issues
2. Seven separate action plans tailored to the needs of the beneficiaries
3. Final report and assessment on the task at hand and the preparedness of the firms to mitigate and meet the Israeli Standards Institute requirements

 

Qualifications:

This assignment is defined to be for team of two individual consultants, and the team should have:

• Proven experience in conducting similar assignments
• Proven experience to comprehensive business diagnostics studies
• Excellent skills in writing reports
• Proven record in his/her knowledge in conducting development reports
• For Junior consultant, a minimum of Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Economics or any other related or equivalent fields; with proven work experience of at least 7 years
• For Senior Consultant, a minimum of Masters degree in Business Administration, Economics or any other related field; with proven work experience of at least 5 years

 

Skills in the following domains are of a particular interest:

• Qualitative and Quantitative research skills.
• Good communication skills in English and Arabic both orally and in writing.
• Good interpersonal and team working skills.
• Good handling of work tasks in demanding conditions.

 

Duration, Timeline and Reporting

The level of effort for this assignment shall not exceed 32 working days for the Junior Consultant and not exceeding 14 working days for the senior Consultant. The task may be extended based on the satisfactory completion of the first phase of the project. The commencement date of this assignment is expected to be 30^th September, 2018. The final report should be submitted at the end of the consultancy; and should summarizes the above information. The report should not exceed 20 pages.

All deliverables should be submitted to the Project Manager at ibarghothi@psc.ps.

 

This call for consultants is open until 16^th of September, 2018. Qualified professional consultants are invited to submit their CVs and Reference letters to the following email address: info@psc.ps

Please include “Israeli Green Line Standards Requirements- call for consultants” in the subject line of your email.