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Monday, 18 April 2016 00:10 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Government of Sri Lanka signed a financial agreement recently that will improve food security and increase incomes for 32,000 rural households in the country’s central and southern region.
The $ 65.4 million Smallholder Tea and Rubber Revitalisation Project, which includes a $25.8 million loan from IFAD, will ensure that smallholders’ economic activities in tea and rubber become more productive, profitable and resilient to market volatility.
The financing agreement was signed by IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze and Ministry of Finance Secretary Ranapura Hewage Samantha Samaratunga.
The project will help small farmers who grow tea or rubber improve production and processing, and align their products to take advantage of market opportunities. It will also make rural finance more accessible in order to help farmers develop their rubber or tea business.
“It is important that smallholder farmers are the key decision-makers in all project activities,” said IFAD Country Programme Manager for Sri Lanka Hubert Boirard.
“We are connecting farmers to the value chain, in both the tea and rubber sectors, so that they are stakeholders in producing, processing and marketing their products.”
The project area will cover eight districts in central and southern Sri Lanka: Galle, Matara, Badulla, Kandy and Nuwara Eliya for tea cultivation, Moneragala and Ampara for rubber cultivation and Ratnapura for tea and rubber processing.
Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than $262.8 million in 17 projects in Sri Lanka, with a total project cost of $464.9 million including co-financing, directly benefitting 557,000 rural households.
IFAD invests in rural people, empowering them to reduce poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and strengthen resilience. Since 1978, it has provided about $17.6 billion in grants and low-interest loans to projects that have reached some 459 million people. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialised United Nations agency based in Rome – the UN’s food and agriculture hub.
