The International Fund for Agriculture Development – IFAD has committed to injecting K13.5 million (about US$750,000) in Zambia as contribution towards the handling of economic challenges beset on rural communities by the Covid – 19 pandemic.
IFAD Regional Director for East and Southern has announced in a letter addressed to Finance Minster Dr. Bwalya Ng’andu that Zambia is one of the 59 selected countries that will benefit from IFAD’s newly established Rural Poor Stimulus Facility.
According to information made available to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT by Ministry of Finance Spokesperson Chileshe Kandeta on July 1, 2020, IFAD has put in US$40 million of its own funds as seed money for the Rural Poor Stimulus Facility to get started while more funds will be raised from other development and cooperating partners around the globe.
It is anticipated that the funding to recipient countries will increase as more donors contribute to the facility and that IFAD’s facility resources are intended to support the Government’s interventions in responding to the Covid-19 crisis by financing targeted investments that support rural based small-scale producers and poor households.
The latter written to the minister further indicates that some of the areas to be financed through the IFAD’s Rural Poor Stimulus Facility include providing inputs and basic asserts to enable small-scale producers maintain production and establish fast-maturing alternatives agriculture enterprises.
Other areas include facilitating access to markets in conditions of restricted movement and ensuring that market remain open, and break even demand, feasible and delivering targeted funds through existing financial institutions that work with rural based small-scale producers and small and medium agricultures enterprises to preserve services, markets and jobs.
Dr. Ng’andu has since thanked IFAD for the K13.5 million support saying the facility will effectively supplement rural sustainability interventions that the government has so far developed in response to the Covid-19 induced economic slowdown.
