The analysis of investment projects is a fundamental step in supporting rural development. Although this is an area whose theoretical principles and analysis methods have been largely established for a long time, there is a lack of uniformity in the way business proposals are prepared and presented, which can hinder the good communication and promotion of the project and, ultimately, the attraction of finance and its success.

The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) RuralInvest methodology emerged, to a large extent, to respond to this gap, seeking to establish itself as a systematic way of supporting the preparation, development and analysis of business proposals that involve investment analysis, constituting a privileged means of contact and communication between promoters, technicians and potential project financiers.

The RuralInvest methodology was developed by the FAO Investment Center and encompasses a set of tools to support the preparation of agricultural and rural investment projects and business plans, which includes user-friendly and multilingual software (RIV20), and a set of tools to support its use, with user manuals and access to a worldwide community of users. The results are presented in a professional quality digital document (pdf), automatically generated by the program, in the form of a report that brings together all the essential information for the overall assessment of the project and its economic and social viability.

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