IFAD funded projects benefit 97 lakh households
Development projects in Bangladesh supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are making substantial progress in helping reduce rural poverty by improving agricultural productivity.
Overall, the IFAD country programme which is directly benefiting 9,702,562 households has produced significant results in alleviating rural poverty, especially in increasing rural household income and assets in the projected areas, Oscar A Garcia, director of the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD, said.
Garcia said this yesterday at a programme held in the capital where IFAD revealed the findings of their latest country programme evaluation (CPE) for Bangladesh conducted by the Independent office of evaluation of IFAD.
IFAD a specialized agency of the United Nations is dedicated to eradicate rural poverty in developing countries. It was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference.
The mandate of the independent office of evaluation of IFAD is to undertake evaluations of projects, country programmes and corporate policies with the aim of assessing results achieved and generating lessons for further strengthening the performance of IFAD financed projects.
This is the third CPE for Bangladesh. The two previous ones were conducted in 1994 and 2006. This latest CPE covered IFAD activities in Bangladesh over a period of ten years between 2004 and 2014.
Speaking on the occasion, Oscar A Garcia, director of the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD said, Given that our office conducts only around 5-7 country programme evaluation every year in all the regions of the world,
having conducted three programme evaluations in this country may be considered as an indicator of the importance IFAD attributes to its
partnership and overall collaboration with Bangladesh.
Since 1979, IFAD has financed 30 projects in Bangladesh for a total project cost of $1,689 million of which IFAD loans amounted to $673.9 million. This positions Bangladesh among the top three recipients of IFAD funding in the Asia and the pacific region and also globally, said Garcia.
He however said that there are still few issues that deserve further attention like ensuring the long term sustainability of benefits and further scaling up of results which require policy level dialogue and strategic initiatives.
Hoonae Kim, IFAD director for Asia and the Pacific said, given the concentration of poverty, changing demographics, shrinking rural space and climate change vulnerabilities of the country, the evaluation emphasizes that IFADs role and strategy in the country faces critical challenges and future programme will require creative rethinking.
These include enhanced support to the transformation of small-scale agriculture including fisheries and livestock, into a more dynamic and commercially profitable sector, promoting wider access to micro credit and continuous attention to environmental protection and climate change adaptation, said Kim.
