ST GEORGE'S-The Unit­ed Na­tions' rur­al de­vel­op­ment agency is to co-fi­nance a US$7.5-mil­lion project in Grena­da de­signed to al­le­vi­ate pover­ty in the Caribbean coun­try, ben­e­fit­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 12,000 mem­bers of poor com­mu­ni­ties on the main is­land and the isle of Car­ri­a­cou. The UN In­ter­na­tion­al Fund for Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment (IFAD) will pro­vide US$3 mil­lion in loan to the six-year Mar­ket Ac­cess and Rur­al En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme to cre­ate jobs, im­prove mar­ket ac­cess and sup­port rur­al mi­cro-en­ter­prise projects in 50 com­mu­ni­ties, ac­cord­ing to an agree­ment signed in Rome be­tween the Fund and Grena­da's gov­ern­ment.

The Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide US$2.2 mil­lion in co-fi­nanc­ing, with the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank con­tribut­ing an­oth­er US$2.3 mil­lion. "De­spite its rel­a­tive­ly high gross na­tion­al in­come, the rur­al ar­eas of Grena­da still suf­fer from high lev­els of pover­ty," said Jaana Keitaan­ran­ta, the IFAD coun­try pro­gramme man­ag­er for Grena­da. "Fam­i­lies liv­ing in rur­al ar­eas are al­so more vul­ner­a­ble to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, have lim­it­ed nat­ur­al re­sources and few op­por­tu­ni­ties to find a job. With this in mind, we worked with the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da to de­sign a pro­gramme that will give young peo­ple new op­por­tu­ni­ties, re­duce re­liance on high-priced food im­ports by strength­en­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and pro­mote en­tre­pre­neur­ship."

Im­ple­ment­ed by the Grena­da's fi­nance min­istry, the pro­gramme seeks to im­prove ac­cess to fi­nan­cial ser­vices, strength­en com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and pro­duc­ers as­so­ci­a­tions and sup­port a na­tion­al ad­vo­ca­cy cam­paign that will ad­dress­es gen­der and youth is­sues. Keitaan­ran­ta said the fund­ing sig­nals a re­newed com­mit­ment from IFAD in the Caribbean, and will sub­stan­tial­ly con­tribute to the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da's goals of sus­tain­ing high eco­nom­ic growth, restor­ing fis­cal and debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty, re­duc­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and al­le­vi­at­ing pover­ty. Caribbean360.com