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The objective of the Agriculture and Rural Development Project is to assist Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to strengthen the capacity of its state-level and entity-level institutions to deliver more efficient and effective agricultural services and support programs as well as to make a substantial contribution to an acceleration of BiH's eligibility to access support under the European Union Instrument for Pre Accession for Rural Development (IPARD). This closing date extension request stems primarily from the need to construct laboratory facilities for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), residues, and other plant health and phytosanitary testing at the agricultural institute located in Banja Luka as part of the reference laboratory network for the State Veterinary Office (SVO), the State-level Plant Health and Phytosanitary Agency (APPH), and the Food Safety Agency (FSA). The laboratory upgrade is necessary in order for the Agricultural Institute to fulfill its mandate for testing plant-based food products for the country, which would assist the country to meet the European Union (EU) food safety requirements, as well as for the project to fully meet the project development objective (PDO). Meeting EU food safety requirements is an urgent task with the imminent accession of Croatia to the EU given that Croatia is the country's largest export market for agricultural products. The project had originally envisaged the laboratory to be constructed on the existing building of the agricultural institute. However, upon inspection of the building's structure, it became clear that the building will need far-reaching structural upgrades and updating a number of current installations for it to become compliant with current laboratory building codes. These extensive upgrades, including the unknowns related to rehabilitation of older buildings, led the Ministry of Agriculture to
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